an old writer and his words

  • ARIA

    After years of embarrassmentI have finally come into the light.It isn’t that my writing has improved,although I surmise that wouldbe a narrow space to fill,or that I can now draw thingsthat were once stick peopleand animals and things. What has improved, andimproved significantlyis my singing voice, oncea three note range, and onenot known to music,but…

    Lou Faber

  • IMAGINING

    I never imagined any of this, couldn’t have you correctly note, but I imagined many things that did not, could not exist, that after all is one purpose of dreams and nightmares. I did imagine writing, words shaped to fit odd places, never round pegs or square holes, but fluid, shifting shapes like lava seeking…

    Lou Faber

  • HISTORY

    We only see the present as history,by day history is a matter of minutes,by night of seconds, years or centuries. There is no future to be seen, onlyimagined, the mind writing a storythat can never be read, never told. It is only when we close the eyesthat the present truly exists,independent of the past, free…

    Lou Faber

  • Advice to The Beginning Haikuist

    Now take up the penand write economicallylest you run out of First published in Defenestration, Vol. XVI issue 2 August 2019

    Lou Faber

  • WRITERS

    I was born the same day, ina much later year as Thornton Wilder,a fact that had no impact at allon my life, since I discovered ourcommon birthday long aftermy life’s path was half tread. I read him in my youth, and mustadmit I can recall nothing of whatI read, which I attribute to allthat I…

    Lou Faber

  • NEVER EVER

    For those who cannot see the picture above, please imagine this text is the most hated font of all time*: There are certain sinsa poet learns never to commit,whether by teaching orsimply bad experience. Poetic sins come in manyshapes and sizes, grammatical,typographical, metaphorical,or just about any -al you choose. Bad rhyme is a minefield, unableto…

    Lou Faber

  • UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL

    It was a plain white envelopequite large, laying in the mailbox,a name and return address,nothing out of the ordinaryuntil I realized there were nostamps, just a marking,Postage PaidMelbourneVic. Inside was a magazineand within two poemswith which I was familiarbut which were nowbeing read on the oppositeside of the globe and Ihad to wonder whatthe Aussies…

    Lou Faber

  • KENSHO

    Tonight, if all goes well, I will bea monk in a good-sized Buddhist temple.I am hoping it will be in Nara,at Todai-ji perhaps, or Asakusaat Senso-ji, or better still somewherein Kyoto, although it might well bein the Myanmar jungle or somewheredeep within the Laotian highlands. One problem with that world isthat I have no control…

    Lou Faber

  • JE SAIS QUOI

    I admit I am an odd duck, odder for not being a duck at all. But the expression has a certain je ne sais quoi to it, as does that expression and I am all about language. All that is a long round about way of acknowledging that I have always wanted to use the…

    Lou Faber

  • A SIMPLE SONG

    It’s simple enough to write a song,that’s what I heard him say,and though I doubted that whollyhe say try, just give it a day. I promised I would try to writebut I knew that I’d fail in timefor even Leonard Cohen nowand then used a subtle rhyme and that is not something for whichI was…

    Lou Faber