Here's the poem..  Sorry for the goof!

LAZARUS

Mornings were a dull routine
Immobile
Many hors would pass until my brain's command
My anxious limbs its tortured message reached
And permitted steps, first halting
Like a child would take
Then runstumble
Strangers asked:
"What troubles him?
His legs like branches on a mishaped tree
Do move in deformed harmony."

I

The day began normally for me.
Up at five.  Run.
At seven leave.
Drive there on the 401.
Arive shaking from the tension
Of driving.  Or so I thought.
Until the doctor said:
"Parkinson's" Esther cried.
The doctor said:
"You will tie flies agan"
The fool had no sense of what's important.

Nor had I.
I tried to hide the shaking hand
The dragging foot.
To no avail.  One day I said:
"No, not hangover. Parkinson's

No pain
No movement
No work
Pension at forty-five.

A baker's dozen year now
I raged like Samson
I did not curse God
I tried to understand
Why me?
There is no reason
There never is
So, why not me?

It is perverse
Some days I move at will
Others cannot despite my will

It moves in leaps as if to curb
My pleasure.
I am trapped inside my body.
But not in prison.
For I have much to do before I go
I must complete the task,
Fulfil the vision.

II

There are otherswho do not know
Why they are different
Or what makes them so
They live in squalor and
Fear
Of what they do not know.

Because we are indifferent
Because we care more for the far away
Than the near
Bosnia, not Regent's Park
New neighbourhoods to us
Xenophobia is powerful
We are afraid of what we do not know.

The Good Samaratin shared not our fears
He helped without reward
We have neither
Soul nor imagination
We care what others think
Emotion does not show
It is unmanly
To stop before satiety
Or so we think.

III

He said: "The poor are always with us"
Do not make Him a liar
For He is perfect
And cannot lie.

We are or brother's keeper
Providence keeps us.
We defy it hedonically
Always testing limits
We are the hollow men
And do not now it.
We whimper at affronts to comfort
And repeat old words
That cleanse guilt
Like silver polish
No effort.

We go about from day to day
Seeing nothing but footsteps.
Smelling only the ordinary and execrable,
Feeling nothing but itchen textures and
Bedroom emotions.

What closes or eyes to wonder?
Our touch to the exquisite?
Our minds to the unknown?

Why are we afraid to explore the beyond?
Examine the rose without thought of time
Or consequence?
Shut off all around
Let concentration become meditation
Surrounded by what was always there
Now understood.

Creation transforms us
If we let it, into
New people freed of the opaquing caul
That clouds the senses
Numbs the mind.

IV

We do not think
Of disability
When we are young
We will be forever young
Perfection
We look for and find not.

Now half the time
I cannot walk
Cannot write
Speech is slurred
I can see and
 Hear
And touch

Pain is transient
It is easy to sit and
Not initiate ... anything.
People understand that it is hard.
The anguish of a song unsung,
A book unwritten is as impotence
To creation.  We are free to choose.

We become the passive people
Beneficiaries of goodwill expressed
Without asking us
What, when, where ...
We would like ...
No matter ... they know best
We only have PD
The object of their charity.

I am Lazarus.
There are gradations of Hell.
I know them all.
I am not a survivor.
I am the strongest and best
I must be
To endure Hell.
I am Lazarus
I am not chosen
I have made the choice
To be free

V

Waiting, Endlessly ...
Preparation, three days of tests
Word games, memory, spatial,
Meds on ... meds off ... performance
Videotaping me waling, moving and immobile.

The Social Contract, so-called ...
Richard Hooker looks down in horror
The perverted se of noble thought
Destroys the polity.
Hence the waiting
For an O.R.
False alarms ... then
Go back home.

VI

Skull bolted to the table
Immobilized
For the duration.
Wide awake. No sedation.
The only sensation
The acrid bouquet
Of he drill going through bone.

Three hundred minutes in the O.R.
Alert
It worked
An end to deformed harmony.

Technology and humanity
Combine to perform a miracle.
There is wonder in life
In God's Creation.

How do I thank the medical team?
They did their jobs
Professionally.
Gave me new life
Resurrection.

Good cheer and labor on some more
Reap the joy I radiate
Walking,
Laughing.
Your care released me from that older trap.

I am Lazarus

October - December 1993