"I see how going mad is not so crazy after all"

Watching Shooting Stars Fall My roommate in the lockdown psych ward was an amputee In a wheelchair and he always wore his hospital gown While I wore what I wore before to look more like outside He was inside everywhere and did not know did not care So it came as no surprise he was as crazy as me With his troubling little stump below one knee waggling down That he was mad the other way though he was justified His fat face up in mine until I got it out of there He dreamed what was and was not of him had a reunion His leg came back but came back black the rest white and angry His long lost limb had come too late his madness was his hate The lockdown psych ward was a mad and angry place to be My Grandma was a woman toughened by disappointment And I the only one who never disappointed her Which is to say I did not die nor someway else go where She did not want to as I drove her where she wanted to And I always gave her a laugh as I gave her a lift In her fifty year old Chrysler land yacht just as haunted Then as now and when I lost her I wondered where she went At first but now I find her in myself a given gift The Reverend Reavis wept whenever he tried to pray His sobbing filled his church especially at communion I was a child and could not yet understand what this was Since time had not yet taught me some sad things I know today He gave himself as offering and wept like that because While wanting badly to do good he found that he could not Remember who he was and was not and so he forgot When we want to do good badly this is what good it does He sacrificed himself and found that he was not enough Unlike my Grandma disappointment could not make him tough Neither one went mad like me nor my roommate amputee Who learned the hard way that was just what we would have to do And as we regard each other in the mirror we see Ourselves as we create us making our reality Reflected in reverse we are being and becoming And we want to do good badly for all the good it does As at half past my long lifetime watching shooting stars fall How when they fall they just keep falling until they fall through Lessons we are here to learn which take a lifetime coming I see how going mad is not so crazy after all +Steven Curtis Lance Copyright MMX