an old writer and his words

  • THE ECHO

    NOTE: My new book is here at last. My latest collection of poetry and short stories has just been published by Plain View Press. Since you have been following and reading my work if you would like more information about Free of the Shadow, just click here for a special offer. The echo of lovemay…

    Lou Faber

  • MS WORD THESAURUS

    birthbeginningopeningbreachalienationestrangementenmitymalicemalevolencehatredrepugnancehostilityconflictbattlecombatassaultonslaughtaggressionbrutalitysavagenessatrocitycrimeassaultstrikebeatvanquishcrushannihilatedestroymurderhomicidedeath First published in The Candid Review, Issue 3, 2024https://thecandidreview.org/ms-word-thesaurus/

    Lou Faber

  • MURDER

    It is one thing to murder your little darlings, as writers like to say, but as a poet it is wholly another thing to murder your children, those you have raised from birth on the page, tended with care hoping they might one day leave home and find their place in the world. How do…

    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

  • YUNJU’S “PLACE THAT CANNOT BE CONTAINED”

    Ask yourself whoyou were beforeyou were born?You will saythere was no you.And yet when youare fully in the momentthere is no you.Are you unborn? A reflection on Case 94 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans (True Dharma Eye)

    Lou Faber

  • BONDS

    When she asks me if I remember whenI lost my virginity I have to stopand consider the question beforethe obvious answer appears and I say“according to my birth certificate, Ilost my virginity at 11:31 P,Mat the Washington Children;sMedical Center more than sevendecades ago, although I haveto admit I have no recollectionof the event, nor the…

    Lou Faber

  • FATHERING

    There is a certain cruelty in knowingwhere my birth father is buried, a pictureof his headstone in the National Cemetery,his face as I know it cropped from a group photoof his unit while stationed in New Hampshire.The cruelty is not in that fact, or that I havea picture of the grave of my first adoptivefather…

    Lou Faber

  • SPACING

    We have been told that spacewith its billions of starsand countless galaxies is vastand still largely empty, a voidthat needs no filling, ever expanding.We are small creatures in that vastness,important only to ourselves, motesof cosmic dust easily forgotten.But the space between heart and mindcan be equally vast, one untetheredfrom the other, always a voidthat we…

    Lou Faber

  • THREADS

    They keep arriving in my email,sometimes one or two a day,and then nothing for a week or more.I look at them out of curiosity,because I have learned all I wantedsome time ago and they are like icingon a cake I no longer intend to eat.But they are “family” of sorts, distantalways, remote usually, but I…

    Lou Faber

  • THE PAPER

    He was 11 when he first discovered it. Jimmy knew immediately that (1) it was something remarkable, (2) he didn’t understand it at all, and (3) he dare not let his parents know he had it. It was (3) that gave him the most worry. Not what they would do to him if they discovered…

    Lou Faber