Why Not? I I used to wonder if I was But understand I am because Of how it hurts the way it does Now and then but then again when The wonder is revealed again I understand because I feel What is that does if it is real As how I understand it then Who feel myself to be now though It may hurt still go will go on Having to be though having been As I am until I am gone I used to wonder but I know How I go on now so I go II A discreetly priestly sign-of-the-cross Small and close points equidistant Through all the existential loss When the universe seemed inconsistent Over the lock on the gate when I get back from getting the mail again Then over the coffee machine When I push the button and let it go To let the miracle begin Knowing the universe will know Though I might have forgotten what I mean Demented between then and now What is forgotten is not even though Remembered inconsistently Existentially what has been Or essentially never was might be What I remember that somehow Might not have been the universe but me Now growing closer knowing how Not to resist an eccentrically Traced pattern of another time And place through spacetime just in case That mattered enough that I write this rhyme Obsessively-compulsively III As to my question why am I? My suggestion why not? is why Curiosity is to be And so I am curiously When curiosity is how I know I am then I know now When curiosity is what Is having been to now through when I had to see the hard way then To see it through by being me Out of sheer curiosity Not only what to be is but About the only thing I got Out of being furiously Curiously got through somehow My why am I? to my why not? Steven Curtis Lance