I am
naked
in my thought

Safe
within my room
nestled and cocooned
I touch no one and no one
touches me

I am poet
Words barred and leveraged
for all soiled souls
who are possessed

For who finds faith
in word
without light
while searching
in the dark

Parkinson's is not a stranger—
it's the shadow in the room
I try to staple to the wall
but who always finds a seat
staring at my hands
like they're already his.

He is jealous—jealous of the clay
that once softened beneath my thumbs
jealous of how my fingers
could command a world into form—
curls and strands of bolts and wires
shapes and contours of emerging faces
from nothing but faith and patience.

He wants to take that all away—
he wants to steal away my hands.

My hands—
the ones that pointed at shooting stars
and said There, son, wish.
The ones that held sorrow like it was glass
and never let it shatter.
The ones that cupped water
from a mountain stream
built sandcastles and kingdoms
wrote love letters and goodbye notes
and every poem in between.

Parkinson's is not polite—
He shakes me not to wake me up
but to remind me I am falling apart
in small bite size morsels—
inconvenient razor-sharp tremors.

He wants to convince me
that every stroke of my pen
is an affront to gravity—
that each line I draw
is a negotiation with more failure.
He leans close and says,
Why bother, brother, sculpting worlds
with hands that no longer listen—


These hands—weathered and worn out.
They have kissed a thousand stories into being
held loved ones in the rawest nights
lifted others from the floor of themselves.

These hands are ink-stained prophets
keepers of promise and possibility.
I have built entire universes in my palms
and no thief—no trembling thief
in the guise of a disease—
will erase what I have made.

So if Parkinson's comes,
hands outstretched,
grinning like he owns my ending—
I will raise my broken fists
however crooked, however cracked
and I will write one more verse
before every period,
from every last stanza
from every poem
I ever wrote
rains down on me.

He can shake me—
but he will never steal the art
I already gave to this world
to just make me into a caterpillar
with broken hands and broken wings.

Emptying night soil
From the bucket

Evoking memory of Romantic
Dinner 'neath sparkling
Chandelier.

How intertwined we are
Prison, Hotel
Body, Soul

Lovers soil and sparkle
Together

"come in, come in, part the curtains.
I'll tell your future.

i tip toed in...heavy night
beyond the door.
the curtains parted rippling
like water circling a deepening hole

and the face of shadow moans,
"you seem to be looking for answers???"

"well, yeah, does the size of the tombstone
tell how much you are loved,
or how much love you gave?'

"sit down," the shadow tells me,
i'll dust off the prayer wheel,
tell your future."

"when i was a kid
i dreamed in shadows
and whispered to the night.

i know the future.

the dead go to places
they will only know."

the face of shadow offers
roses cupped in wistful hands.

the shadow dissipating,
petals from black roses falling to the ground.

I'm just a sparrow
longing for sky
and if I had wings
I could fly.

i'm sitting in a corner,
blue as a flower,
saying a prayer.

that room

I ve written
about that room, above the bar, often.
that there were shadows,
no windows,
but I really don't remember?
window, no window?

but whenever i tried to look up
there was the angry sky
chasing hope around narrow streets          

and those bits and ripples
of rain long asleep

casting shadows across
windows distant,
down my window pane.

do you ever think of me?

(written while sitting in a dark room
starring into a rain splashed window).