an old writer and his words

  • INTO THE TIDE

    The woman at the next table stares at her fork with eyes which appear bottomless pools of sorrow. She picks at the noodles, raises and lowers the glass of wine without sipping. She is lost within herself and even the waiter approaches with trepidation for fear of falling in and drowning in her sadness. In…

    Lou Faber

  • DEMONS

    In the night there are no demons just the sound of your breathing soft, as your touch on my back, your foot against my calf.

    Lou Faber

  • DHARMA

    In Tibet there are more than 80 words to describe states of consciousness, several words to explain the sound of prayer flags rustling in a Himalayan breeze that reaches up to the crest of the peaks that lick at the slowly gathering clouds, all of these words never uttered. There are no words in Tibet…

    Lou Faber

  • AMOUR

    A voice clear, jazz straight up in six strings with no surprises, but sitting next to my wife and lover it is what an evening wants in much the same way as a night in the heart of winter demands spooning beneath the blanket pulled up to our chins the outside world, having ceased to…

    Lou Faber

  • DAWNING DREAM

      In the morning the sun will reach through our window and draw us out of sleep. Some mornings it sneaks through the clouds which it pushes aside, only to retreat again when we reach out and try to grasp it. It is the sun’s caress we crave, the promise of a lover yet unmet,…

    Lou Faber

  • ROAD TRIP

    Two nights gone and sleep has come fitfully, and I stir each time I reach across the bed and you aren’t there, and there is only the faintest smell of bleach and cleaning solvent. I want very much to dream of you, to trace your cheek with dream fingers, to taste your lips on mine,…

    Lou Faber

  • DISEMBARKING NARITA

    You disembark quickly a small bow to the flight crew, and walk briskly to immigration. The young man glances at your passport and embarkation card hands flying with the stamps. The baggage is offloaded onto the creeping segmented belt yours the fifth through the heavy plastic flaps hefted onto the cart. The customs agent pauses…

    Lou Faber

  • NIGHT CHANGES

    Night alters sound in ways we can never precisely determine. It is possible our hearing changes with the flight of the sun, but the moon scoffs at this premise. A train rattling across the landscape in the heat of day becomes a musical instrument in the relative silence of night, playing a melody that insuates…

    Lou Faber

  • LOVER

    There is a moment just after the prior moment, when the ticking of the clock on the nightstand is amplified, reverberating off the skylights, when the heat of your body is a blanket from which I never wish to emerge.

    Lou Faber

  • APART TOGETHER

    It is this time each night that I think of you lying in bed, your head pressed deep into your pillow your chest rising and falling to an unheard beat. I reach out for you and grasp the blanket of the hotel bed and imagine it is your back as I trace my finger down…

    Lou Faber