an old writer and his words

  • IT WILL WAIT

    I’ve finally given up the internal debateabout whether to turn the phone offduring the night, no longer worryingthat I would miss a critical call.I have lived more than long enoughto know that the only calls that comein the heart of the night are thoseannouncing a disaster, a crisis ormost often, recently, another death.I know now…

    Lou Faber

  • NO FAREWELLS

    You’ve been gone something liketwenty-two years now, althoughit doesn’t seem all that long to me.It is like I saw you five years agoand even that seems longer than real.They tell me I was fifty whenyou departed but I can’t clearly recallwhat it was like to be fifty.I know I never said goodbye to youand I…

    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

  • BREATHING

    Somewhere at this very momenta baby takes its first breath,a man dies unexpectedly,a fledgeling bird takes flight,a star is bornor enters its death throes,one of the last of a species is gone,a battle is fought in a senseless war,a waterway is fouled with pollution,smog grips a city,an old man clings to memories.I am still aliveand…

    Lou Faber

  • MY JUDAS

    He, the one I called brotherwanted whatever I hadto give, a droit deprimogeniture, and Icould easily be cast aside,a genetic other with claimonly of time, not blood.Why did they concede to himor were they aware?It hardly matters nowfor they are gone, sheto rest with her daughter,he I know not wherefor there was nothingin the text…

    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

  • THREE HAIKU

    With every breathdeath is a moment closerand so is rebirth this unknown riveris not the one I stepped inone minute ago birth is terminalpromising unknown minutesdeath is a rebirth

    Lou Faber

  • YOU AGAIN

    I have come to recognize the nightas both dear friend and hated foe,purveyor of nightmare and delight.But now I wish that it would stay awayfor my once immortality is goneand for each night I now have one less day.But night always turns down my plaintive prayerand reminds me that I am still aliveand death is…

    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

  • FLOATING, SOARING

    You see them circling in a sun drenched sky,graceful, soaring without expending energy.You know they are vultures, but that thoughtis momentarily lost as you imagine yourselfa wingman to any one of them, freeof the shackles that gravity imposes.One or two land nearby and you pausenow wondering what has died to drawtheir interest, these morticians of…

    Lou Faber