an old writer and his words

  • LUNCH

    The pelican has remarkable patience. It doesn’t hurt that he knows how this will play out. It’s pretty much the same, day after day. That’s life on the jetty. Once the crusty old man is done fishing, once he packs up his cart to leave, he will dump his remaining bait fish on the jetty.…

    Lou Faber

  • OR CUT BAIT

    They sit or stand patientlyon the jetty, a concrete pathjutting out into the ocean. The old timers have twolines out, bait bucketsitting in the bicycle-wheeledcart parked on the edgeof the jetty’s bouldered margin. You don’t ask what they’vecaught, that would be obvious,and you know they are here forthe act of fishing, and the catchis that…

    Lou Faber

  • SURGERY

    Preparing it to undergothe knife, its core excised,stem cast aside, slicedthen cut into piecesI pause to consider thatthis pear was oncea blossom, a delicatewhite flower, its cranberryred anthes soon to turnblack, picked carefully,cradled into a bushel,by a knowing hand,washed, and gentlypacked for shipment.For me it was justplucking it from the binat the market, holdingit in…

    Lou Faber

  • KEICHU THE WHEELMAKER 無門關 八

    A collection of sticksand boards is Keichu’s cart Keichu’s cart no morethan a pileof sticks and boards not Irides no horsepulling no cart a hundred spokesdance in ten directions. A reflection on Case 8 of the Mumonkan (Gateless Gate Koans)

    Lou Faber

  • CHECKOUT LINE

    Time seems frozen in the checkout line stuck between the Mars bars and the tabloids, you wonder how Liz could survive a total body liposuction, and further details of how OJ killed in a moment of lust. The old woman in front rummages in her change purse certain she has the eighty seven cents, the…

    Lou Faber

  • SO TO SPEAK

    It is hard, he says, to put your cart before your horse when you have neither. So then you are left  with the choice of whether to buy a horse and try to overload it until it cannot walk or a cart easily filled that no one can move, or to just buy a half…

    Lou Faber

  • ERGO COGITO

    She says she is certain she exists, much as she is certain he exists as well. He says, she thinks she exists, thinks he does as well.                                                  Descartes, he says, was…

    Lou Faber