an old writer and his words

  • A CHANCE MEETING

    For two years we occupied the same spaceevery week for nine months each year, yetwe never met until thirty years later, at the homeof friends in common, and the realizationwas the source of surprise and humor.How could you inhabit the halls and studiosof a radio station, college but the worlddid not know that, at least…

    Lou Faber

  • SIR, YES SIR

    The hardest part wasn’t the marching,wasn’t the godawful food, although almost so,wasn’t the heat and humidity of San Antonio.It wasn’t the thought that I had nearlyflunked out of college under the sway,or was it swaying away with, recreational drugs,until I cut a deal with the Dean, my futurefor producing a DD-214, an honorable discharge.It wasn’t…

    Lou Faber

  • COLUMN B

    In college, as an English majorI chose Chaucer as my mandatoryColumn B on the menu, Shakespearemy easy Column A choice since the bardand I were at least passingly familiaralthough he claimed not to remember me.Milton just wasn’t my cup of meadso he easily became the odd man out.I listened to the lectures, got comfortablewith the…

    Lou Faber

  • SOLDIERS

    We marchedfor hoursgoingnowhere We satswelteringin classroomspretendingto learn Six weekslaterthey told uswe werewarriors Our haircould beginto grow back Heavensave us fromendless war,fromourselves. First published in Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, Vol. 13A publication of the Laurel Review

    Lou Faber

  • THIS IS NOT: AN APOLOGY

    This is an apology I never wantedor thought I would have to write butnow, my grandchildren, it is necessary. This is not the world I wantedto leave to you, what I had hopedwas a world at peace, a world whereyou could be anything without beingjudged or shunned, where wordshad meaning and books were treasures. Instead…

    Lou Faber

  • SEPARATING

    We sometimes speak of continentspulling apart, land bridges severed,the route taken to get here now gone,no going back, no back to go to.The continent of my youth, myyoung adulthood is gone, recededinto the fog of fading memory, and Iam now a prisoner of sorts on thisnew continent of life, moving evermore quickly to an unavoidable…

    Lou Faber

  • COLLEGE DAYS

    All these years later he still could not fathom why he had done it. It wasn’t something he had thought about doing, but one day he just did it, showed up and got the gig on the carrier current station that reached 96% of the campus. On a good day. But he liked it and…

    Lou Faber

  • GROUND HOLD

    She sits in the middle seat of an oversold DC-9, Carhartt jacket and watch cap pulled tightly over her hair, a blond wisp slipping out the side. She cradles on her lap a tawny brown Stetson with a tooled leather and silver hat band. “It’s never goin’ in an overhead, my fiancee’d go up there…

    Lou Faber

  • IN PASSING

    There are always eerie momentswhen you learn of the deathof someone you knew brieflyseveral decades before.You struggle to remember allyou can of your interactions,places, events, even conversations.But the departed always seems justas they looked when you lastsaw them hardly older, hardto imagine death has claimedsomeone you see as young,while your mirror constantlyreminds you of how…

    Lou Faber

  • ENDING HERE

    I am still not certainhow I ended up hereon the other side of silencewhere words go to slowly die.It was to be foreveruntil severed cruelly by deathbut neither of us diedin manifest ways, justsmall deaths that over timesevered the bonds that still held,a death-borne parting of sorts.It was never a mistakeor an omission of logic,…

    Lou Faber