an old writer and his words

  • LINES

    We love drawing lines and borders. There are few things we do better than that. But increasingly we have lost our once finely honed skill at placing them where they ought to be. I won’t even get into walls on borders to keep out families, those like our families were once. I mean small lines…

    Lou Faber

  • FORGETTING

    What they don’t want to see, or areperhaps blind to, is that it alwayscame down to boats, and fear wasalways overcome, the ocean tamed. Today, it is trucks, trailers, and stillboats, and fear is still overcomefor the promise of better, forthe hope for life without terror. None of the arrivals came invitedmany were turned away…

    Lou Faber

  • THE ROOM

    It was a strange room,that much I recall, with heavyvelvet curtains coveringwhat should have been a window, and might once have been, but no longer.  The only light was a bare bulbin the ceiling, casting a soft amber wash across the time worn oak floor,and once white walls. There was a chair, nondescriptand now long forgottenand a small…

    Lou Faber

  • ARGOT

    There is a languagespoken within a familythat no one outside speaks.It may sound familiarbut listen carefullyand learn otherwise.It is so with my brothereven though there arethick walls between usand yet, in a few wordsintentions are obvious.He keeps me farfrom a placeI’d just as soon not goand in her panicmy mother hears onlyour words and nottheir…

    Lou Faber

  • APPROACHING

    The perfect time of dayoccurs only as the deadof night approaches, thatmoment when the heartof the city falls almost silent. In smaller cities this momentis protracted, arising as the moonreaches toward full expressionand such as pass for tallbuildings settle into sleep. In the great cities, thosethat claim never to sleep,the city reverberates, echoingoff the endless…

    Lou Faber

  • WYNWOOD

    They leap from the walls, they are in your face as you approach. You don’t know what to expect and that is precisely how they wish it. Still, you don’t tire of them, and you don’t recoil, but stare more intently. They engage you, defy you and welcome in the same moment, and you only…

    Lou Faber

  • ROSO FACES THE WALL

    Come before the Master. If he turns from you and faces the wall he honors you. If the Master enters your room and you turn to the wall you will deserve his stick. As you cannot sit in the Master’s seat he may not sit in yours, but all seats are one seat, no wall…

    Lou Faber

  • DOING THOUGHT TIME

        The hardest prison to escape is the one whose walls are built by the mind in fear and trepidation. It is like the open gate you dare not enter fearing that you are leaving and will not be allowed to return. Atop a pole there are an infinite number of directions in which…

    Lou Faber

  • THREE HAIKU

    Giant cranes are perched on thin spindly legs, necks bowed steel beams scratch the clouds. Needle-like church spires reach through the gathering mist clouds begin to bleed. Walls stand in the field one stone piled on another grass withers in shade.

    Lou Faber

  • BOUNDARY

    What is on the other side of this wall that is just too tall to peer over? No one seems to know, though many have surmised it is a completely different world looking little or nothing like the one we inhabit. Last week a young man picked up a ginkgo leaf and said “ahah, it…

    Lou Faber