an old writer and his words

  • INTO THE DARKNESS

    We live in an age when logic has failed and our days come with the darkness of night leaving all of our plans and dreams derailed. We imagined a world, fully detailed to leave our children, that was their birthright. We live in an age when logic has failed and the battles we fought, the…

    Lou Faber

  • UNSAID

    There is so much you wish to sayand yet silence envelopes youwhile those who spoke are led away and you feel a moment’s dismayat what you were forced to do.There is so much you wish to say Gods and men you would inveighbut it was not your lot they drewwhile those who spoke are led…

    Lou Faber

  • UPWARD

    The young child stares up into the skyand sees in the infinite spacecountless worlds take form and then die. On the mesa coyotes cryseeing gods in what men defacethe young child stares up into the sky hears his ancestors’ mournful replyin an atom’s interstitial spacecountless worlds take form and then die. Inside he sees his…

    Lou Faber

  • OLD SCHOOL

    How much better off would we beif every poet and wanna be werecompelled to write using only paperand a quill pen dipped regularlyinto a small glass inkwell? You must wonder if we would seemore elegance, villanelles, sonnets,and the other forms now lying jumbledin the great literary waste bin. What would we discover if leftto our…

    Lou Faber

  • WORDS

    “Suppose,” he says “words may be used only once, after that they disappear.” “You mean in a poem” she replies, “or life itself?” Even four stanzas can challenge most except perhaps Basho. Haiku would replace sonnets, villanelles, sestinas suddenly gone, anaphora is self-contradiction. “Imagine,” the young girl mused “sloganless politicians, talking heads struck mute, hushed…

    Lou Faber

  • IN LOVING MEMORY (17 this time)

    Just what will the puppet king say or will he simply run and hide as we are left to mourn and pray Seventeen more are dead today, we know better than to abide just what will the puppet king say more hollow words, for which they pay “only more guns can stem the tide.” As…

    Lou Faber

  • BODHI VILLANELLE

    Sitting beneath the Bodhi tree I wrestle with passing thoughts in an unending struggle with me. The true face of the pain I see results from what I have wrought sitting beneath the Bodhi tree. I grow tired, wish to flee– above all, to avoid being caught in an unending struggle with me for a…

    Lou Faber

  • SHE SAID

    She said that we are little more than clay to be molded by God and carved by fate and we count on nothing more than this day. It’s but a week since she has slipped away, we expect our sense of loss to abate. She said that we were little more than clay, just so…

    Lou Faber

  • SEASIDE VILLANELLE

    The ocean wind swept through the city a sudden rain washed sidewalk, shop and street, carried both dreams and sins back to the sea. For the young child, time slid by easily, life a campaign that allowed no retreat. The ocean wind swept through the city, rattled church windows, so that all could see the…

    Lou Faber

  • LETTING GO

    Dawn is announced by the sound of the bell, its echo chasing off the ghost of night leaving but whispers of what he cannot tell. Looking inward the mind seeks to rebel, to vanquish the simple call of the light. Dawn is announced by the sound of the bell and the peace of dreams shattered…

    Lou Faber