an old writer and his words

  • WRITTEN

    It was written for all to seebut went unseen as no oneentered the portal willingly,never sufficient curiosityto offset the foreboding.Everyone knew what it saidbut knowing and seeing areseparated by an unbridgeable chasm.It remained an imposed solitude,an isolation inherent in location,implicit in a world spinningoff its moral axis, time extendedand compressed, an irregular pulse.It was written…

    Lou Faber

  • THEATER OF THE ABSURD

    If Aristophanes were suddenlyto arrive here, he would no doubtpause, but with the eye he had,would soon discover such a treasuretrove of material, he could producecomedies to last several lifetimes. The problem would be in findingthe right audience, for here we havelittle taste and patience for the sortof comedy at which he was so adept,and…

    Lou Faber

  • DO AS I SAY

    Eat your vegetables,Don’t ever run with scissors,Clean your room,Always wear clean underwear,Comb your hair every morning,Always say please and thank you,Always listen to adults, they know more,Be nice to animals and small children,Clean your room,Don’t go in the water for an hour after eating,Polish your shoes,Don’t play with sticks, you could put an eye out,Clean…

    Lou Faber

  • BUSINESS SUITS

    “What do you think is the likelihoodof success in the long run,” she asks,and I watch the fly land on my forearm,perched on hairs that barely bend under his inconsequential weight.His wings are a perpetual twitch,almost unseen, and felt only as a faintbreeze in my imagination, while a world is created, a reality collapses, a…

    Lou Faber

  • RETURN

    He arrived todayalthough none saw him coming.He had been here before,been quickly ignored,despite his pleas and prayers,they twisted his wordsto suit their venal desires,his message forever lost in translation.They were not ready,and in their hate fueled world,they might never be.

    Lou Faber

  • PAUSE

    The world ended yesterdayjust as predicted, and thenrestarted, and nothing at allseemed to change yeteverything was slightlydifferent, a little askew. I noticed it, although no onearound me detected it,went about their dayas though nothing happened. The preachers didn’t foreseeit coming, hadn’t predicted it,glad when the restart did notsignal the end of days, for theywere no…

    Lou Faber

  • GANTO’S SIT STILL

    How can I bringthree worlds together?Sitting still,deep in silence,I can carry the mountainto the shore,where the sea,land and skymerge in perfectharmony. A reflection on case 75 of the Shobogenzo (True Dharma Eye) Koans

    Lou Faber

  • CASSANDRA IN FLORIDA

    She is large, and largely immobileand occupies the bench by the roadthat encircles the property like a noose. She does this each day, a crustor more of stale bread tucked awayin a pocket of her always floral housedress that envelopes herand the bench she occupiesas a monarch on her throne. The ibis see her coming…

    Lou Faber

  • WEBBING

    The giant spider in its black shroudsits irritated in the center of its webwishing it ever larger, demandingthat others enter, become enthralleduntil it defines the parametersof the universe the spider imagines. The giant spider silently seethesat the once gardener who, havingtasted the forbidden fruit,has closed the screened dooras he reluctantly departed the gardendiminishing the web’s…

    Lou Faber

  • TIME WHEN

    There waa a time whennews wasn’t news, carriedby mouth, one personto another a game of telephonebefore that concept existed. Newspapers promised usthe news, but in the timeit took to write and print it,it was nearly news,or at worst slightly olds. Now the world is alwaysavailable instantly, but weknow or should, that halfof the time we…

    Lou Faber