an old writer and his words

  • SPLIT

    Setting apart, that is our skill:bifurcating, creating dualities.Is it that unity scares us, certaintyunavoidable, no room to escape,to deny, to invoke missing nuance?One of my religious heritagessays you remove head coveringson entering a sanctuary, the otherthat you put one on upon doing so.One says you are born a sinnerthe other says until a certain ageyou…

    Lou Faber

  • HOW COULD YOU?

    How could you turn your backon Judaism, he asked, as thoughit was a shadow I was trying to outrun.I do not tell him that if his Godwants me to take it up againGod needs only ask me personally,but far too many claim who to be his messengerhave led me to the place I find myself.I…

    Lou Faber

  • STEP RIGHT UP

    They were lemmings aligning,ever impatient, always seeking.For some, it would be rejuvenation,for others rebirth, a recapture of youth.He was no mage, not Merlin, butthey gathered around his tablea lazy susan of desires, pleas, entreaties.All he could offer was snake oil, but theygladly took it as hope, an abiding faithin a cure for their existential condition.They…

    Lou Faber

  • I HAVE NEVER BEEN

    six foot four with a full headof longish brown hair neatly cut five foot ten as the Air Forceclaimed although I neverconformed to their assumption sitting on the deck of a yachttrying to decide if it wassufficiently large enoughto meet my desires sitting on a beach in Hawaiimy oceanside villamere steps away,the housekeeper beckoningwith a…

    Lou Faber

  • Q.E.?

    Religion, he said, is inherently illogicaland the older the religion, the more illogicalit becomes, accreting absurdity over time.A corollary of this proposition is thatthe more organized a religion claims to be,the more its spirituality is buried underrules and regulations which only illustratethe principal proposition set forth above.Humans create religion not to explainthe unexplainable but to…

    Lou Faber

  • HEAVEN, ONLY SLIGHTLY OUT OF REACH

    God is fixed in the firmamentseen as puppet master by somepatrician uncle, small childendlessly shifting blocksin new, transitory universes.All things recede from a point,have since the creationand that point, dimensionlessis God, vast and infinite.It swings lazily, back, fortha needle in its cusp tracinglines in the bed of sandin constant motion as weand earth, and all…

    Lou Faber

  • FAITH FULL

    It’s a question of faith.You have to have someeven if you doubt it, in factyour doubt is proof you have faithif only in doubt, for you knowyou cannot prove doubt,you just cling to itas a matter of faith.Your faith need not be religiousthough much of faith is,it can be philosophicalor whimsical if you prefer.It can…

    Lou Faber

  • DEAD OR JUST RESTING?

    Some people say religion is dead, or at least mortally wounded. In my generation, closer to death than puberty, there is some truth to that thought because God seems a whole lot less responsive these days, our peers beginning to fall like lemmings from the cliff. But the young clearly have found what has gotten…

    Lou Faber

  • 33,000

    As 33,000 feet, you want the smoothness that experience tells you, the sky will once again deny. Strapped in, you contemplate cursing the gods of travel, but no, they are simply meeting your expectations. Getting this close to heaven was once, she says, a mystical and spiritual experience, but then we transcended all of that…

    Lou Faber

  • EROTHANATOS Vol. 3, No. 3

    Just yesterday Erothanatos (from India) released its issue number 3 of volume 3, a collection of poets from several countries.  I was honored to have seven poems appear in this issue and you can find them here: https://www.erothanatos.com/v3i3n10 But if you don’t have the time, one of the included poems was: In a Prior Life…

    Lou Faber