office

January 20, 2023

MY RABBI (PART 1)

If you ask why I am a Buddhist
I will tell you there are a myriad
of possible reasons, choose one,
or take this one, it fits nicely.

I am in college, pulling my grades
up to mediocre, thoughts of medicine
gone, law only faint on a distant horizon
a master’s degree away.

I visit my childhood rabbi, a man
who has been my guide through much.
I peer into his office, his door removed,
and he bids me to come in and sit.

I do, slowly, carefully negotiating
around stacks of books piled
on every possible flat surface,
the walls covered in bookcases

straining to hold their loads, I
knowing a too loud sound, a jostle
and the avalanche would be
impossible to stop, disastrous.

November 20, 2022

OLD HOTEL, NARA

Stepping into the hotel, it was like being dropped into a truly alien world. Nothing shiny, no excess of glass and marble. A simple dark wooden reception desk, a clerk in black with a white vest. A bow upon approaching. Your room is simple, no internet, a single light on a small desk. A tatami mat in the corner. A hard wired phone. And you know, in the distance, the Daibutsu awaits you in the morning. Here there is no CNN International, nothing that isn’t Japanese. Your computer is essentially useless, a fax machine in the office for emergencies. And the nearest business center, sorry closed, is in the city. The Internet is coming soon, they promise . But on your morning run, as you catch your breath on the step outside the Todai-ji Daibutsu-den, a deer comes up to you and licks your face and you know this morning Daibutsu is smiling.

September 15, 2022

A HELL OF A CHOICE

But what if Heaven operates
like a restaurant, closed
each Monday, so you had
better die on Sunday, but
that doesn’t work because
God is resting and there
is no getting in on the sabbath.

That leaves you five days
from which to choose
to die, but God also is
the ultimate physician,
so Wednesdays the office
is closed, so that day
is out unless you can
arrange to die on a golf course.

Given the limitations
it is probably best
to become a Tibetan
Buddhist, do your stint
in the Bardo and be
reincarnated, hopefully
as a house cat, that
is the next best thing to heaven.

First Published in Half Hour to Kill, August 2022
https://halfhourtokill.com/home/a-hell-of-a-choice-by-louis-faber

November 19, 2021

THE OFFICE

Step into a hotel elevator
and you will see the sign
“Elevator certificate is located
In the General Manager’s Office.”

If Einstein were to come back
to life and see this, would he
inquire as to where he could find
the Special Manager’s Office?

And George S. Patton would
no doubt bellow out a demand
that the Corporal Manager
stand front and center.

But as a lawyer, now retired
I am far more interested
in learning the precise office
location of the Specific Manager.

June 29, 2021

READY, FIRE, AIM

He should have known
that the day was doomed
from the moment he woke
to see his alarm clock in pieces
on the floor by his bed, the cat
grinning at him from the place
where the clock had always sat.

Finally arriving at the office,
he was no sooner at his desk
when the fire alarm bell rang.
Within moments of reentering
after the all clear, it rang again,
and his own, very private
Chinese fire drill was under way.

The day calmed until, after lunch,
the Regional Manager arrived,
gathered everyone at the great
round conference table, and
demanded to know who
had made a simple error,
and watched as the inevitable
circular firing squad began.

May 16, 2019

VIOLIN

We sat at the table,
sucking the last of the djej
from the bones piled
along the edge of the platter.
“I played for seven years”
he said, “under Tilson-Thomas
and later Rudel, bad years those,
I sat two rows back
second from the stage edge.”

He was unremarkable,
forgettable until he nestled
the violin under his chin.
Balding even then
the fringe of hair clownish,
lacking only a red nose.
At the old metal desk
he struggled over applications
for insurance policies,
forever asking if he had
the premiums calculated right,
stumbling over the pitch,
dreading the word death,
preferring to talk of his bow
dancing across the strings.
He sold just enough policies
to make his monthly draw
and generate an override commission
to help pay our mortgage
but he would, my father said,
never make much
of a career in insurance.
When I sat in the office
on the old leather sofa
he asked me to marvel
that an old man, bitter
and stone deaf, could hear
so clearly, alone in a small room.
I listened politely, waiting
until he might be distracted
and I could return to neatly
arranging the pink sheet
between the whites
feeding it carefully through
the rollers, and slowly peeling
it back to reveal
the dark sepia copy.

He sits on the metal bed
fingers bent into talons
and cringes at the screech
of the walker
dragging along the hall.
He wrestles with the radio knob
and hears the strains of the concerto
as a tear runs down his cheek
and he waits for the nurse
to change his incontinence pad.

First Appeared in Licking River Review, Issue 28, Winter-Spring 1996-1997.
November 5, 2016

TOKYO MEMORIES

1.
An older, silver-haired woman
in neon green pants, a brown blouse
and black shop apron stoops
and carefully scrubs
the alleyway outside her small shop.

2.
Salarymen fill the tunnels
of Kokkai-gijidomae station
at 6 P.M., 7, 8, and in fewer numbers, 9,
shuffling down the long corridors
to the Chiyoda or Marunouchi Line trains,
where they will sit stiffly, faces in books
or papers, or they will hang from the straps
another day complete, ticked off the schedule.
They will dream of trading polyester suits
for wool, and a desk not pressed
against half-height cubicle walls.

3.
Akasaka-mitsuke Station:
the electronic sign marks
the next train for Shibuya at 17:52.
It is 17:54 and the face
of the stationmaster is a mix
of anger and frustration for
such tardiness cannot be accepted.