I wonder if there are priests
sitting on beds drinking Diet Coke
and contemplating the meaning
of heaven, of sex,
of indigestion from a burger
and fries with onions
in a bar, the angels
covering their ears from the din
of four pool tables,
of slipping on the spilled Red Rock,
while outside the traffic thins
and the neon blinks
its message to the gods.
First appeared in Anthropocene, Issue 1, 2021
https://www.anthropocenepoetry.org/post/another-evening-spent-by-louis-faber
From the heart of the inferno
Dante and Lucifer grow bored
waiting, waiting for the ferry
while Charon stops for lunch
yet again at a Greek diner
in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen.
They take up a game of catch
tossing Molotov cocktails,
raining fire onto the brimstone,
setting the Styx ablaze.
Each knows this is not necessary,
for necessity is a creature
of heaven and there is no room
for the extraneous here
in the realm of forgotten souls.
We watch from deep within
a nightmare of our darkest
memories, certain that heaven
must await us, or purgatory
if that is how our fate
is to finally be written.
The angels dance on the ceiling
waiting for the precise moment
to break Morpheus’ grasp
and drag us back to our reality,
to continue our dance
between heaven and hell.
First published in Fresh Words Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 3, June 2022
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1G9eVgBt1ZS1syN9RruNQLzt7-JVq04sY/view
The ghosts of my birth parents
blow into my dreams as
so many white sheets torn
from the clothesline
by gale winds, fly over me,
at once angels and vultures
carrying off memories
created from the clay
of surmise and wishful thinking.
I invite their visits, frail
branches to which to cling
in the storms of growing age,
beginnings tenuous anchors
to hold against time, knowing
the battle cannot be won,
but take joy in skirmishes
not to be diminished
by an ultimate failure I
have long come to accept.
There are nights
when the song
of a single cricket
can pull you away from sleep.
She says that she has heard
that not all Angels have wings
and neither of them
is sure how you would know
if you met a bodhisattva.
He searches the mail
every day, for a letter
from unknown birth parents
but none of the credit cards
he ought to carry
offers to rebate his dreams.
Each night they lie
back pressed to back
and slip into dreams.
She records hers
in the journal she keeps
with the pen, by the bed.
He struggles to recall his
and places what shards he can
in the burlap sack
of his memory.
First Published in Where Beach Meets Ocean, The Block Island Poetry Project, 2013
She wants to ask me
how many lawyers
can dance on the head
of a pin, but she knows
that at their hourly rates,
no one will pause
to count them.
There is
that, and the fact
that lawyers are used
to calling the tune,
and not dancing to it.
That, she says,
and lawyers are never
mistaken for angels.
She says she is certain
that she has seen
the archangel Gabriel.
It was late at night, to be sure,
but it clearly wasn’t
someone of this world
and equally clearly not an alien,
since there was no UFO or wormhole.
She knew, as well, it wasn’t God,
“Why would God trifle with me,
when there are so many
more important people
to scare the devil out of.
It had to be Gabriel,
I just know it,
and in the end
he did prove it to me,
not by speaking of course,
his presence was communication
enough, but by how he dressed.
Only Gabriel,” she noted,
“would dare appear in public
in a deep beige Armani linen suit.”
an old writer and his words 