Mike Finley Poems

The hardest lesson of the sinner
Is that all is in you, and nothing in him.
Why are we given these garrulous minds
If the end-challenge is only to submit?
...

you strip like an ear of corn
gold & beautiful
silk tumbling
...

Where I am going, I don't know
The road ahead twists out of sight

Where it will lead no one can say
...

How can you kill what cannot be killed?
Why weep for those who have been taken?

Why furnish ammunition to the enemy
...

Stars, ignore the crimes occurring
like catfights under the windows.

Sometimes we're ashamed
...

You told yourself you could do this without them
If you had their help it would undo the purpose
Recused yourself from the argument at hand
And folded into quietness there
...

Taking down my office before the move,
I come across a picture of my daughter and me
at Disneyland, when she was little.
Frozen in the plastic elephant, our faces a riot
...

I was eating minestrone
when I heard something fall
outside my apartment window.
Too dark to see much
...

There surely must be
because of the glory
But obviously not the advertisements
They will not be selling Winston and
...

The soul knows it is standby equipment.
Some days for it are not days at all,
because it stays in its box,
uninvited to the world.
...