My mother told me today the fact,
That more bombs had been dropped on Gaza by the Israelis,
That the whole of world war 2
-world war 2.

When learning about the horrors of the holocaust,
The obvious question arises-
How did that happen?
How did no one help?
How did no one notice?
Is so unfortunately clear now,
People don’t care,
Somehow
I could not tell you why,
I could not begin to understand

You’d think,
We all thought,
It would never happen again,
But if it did-
The whole world would stop,
But of course, once again, it is not

While many people care,
And help as much as they can,
There too many people,
so many governments,
Who turn a blind eye-
HOW?
Are they not human?
Maybe some people don’t know,
Yet I find that hard to believe,
People would rather stay ignorant,
It’s easier I suppose,
‘Ignorance is bliss’-
Ignores them to carry on with their lives,
But what about their lives?

And these right wing news companies,
Never telling the full truth,
They’d only report about the one missile that got through to Israel by Yemen,
But never dare to mention the hundreds,
Destroying
Slaughtering
Murdering
These poor innocent people,
Children who have only just began their life-
How can people say it’s not a genocide?
When over 60 000 people have been killed

More bombs than world war 2,
And the world protects the murders,
It makes me sick
My heart will forever break for them,
I will never not think of them-
The lost,
The murdered,
They cried out for help,
They will get their justice- I pray

I can imagine in the future,
The memorials and tributes,
To remember this horrible time,
Everyone in disbelief of how it happened,
Asking the same questions we did in school,
And what good is that,
To care when it is over,
When you could not even open your eyes
- To what happening right in front of you

-JJ
04/05/25

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.

We never know how what we are experiencing now might help us in the future. Every experience is valid and may be useful. Let's embrace everything and trust.

Everywhere
there's talent
indeed great talent
of very form
but sadly
so little
comes into
their true essence
for some reason
strangely unknown
to the person

just like
the fairest flower
being  unseen
with its petals
all blown
and strewn
by the wind
and drop silently
upon
some lonely
corner
to be
swept away
into a hidden '
drain-
ah, all such beauty
drowned
and has ended
all in vain!

Such loss
such grievous pain!