Mike Finley

Let a thing be what we say it is,
if a donkey is eating corn
let the donkey not be an allegory
nor the corn a corn byproduct.
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i hear the chime of the poem's voice
and in the notes you write
a guy who hungers for truth and tells it too
who understands that pain is the face
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1. Stop talking and listen. Listen to yourself listening. Then listen to that.

2. Pile all your hats in the back yard and burn them. Especially any with feathers.
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The sugar house is shutting down,
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You are the winking stream,
We are all hiccup and failure.

You are love, a perfect dream.
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How confusing it all is.
'Humility' suggests crouching.
But what it means is relaxing,
Allowing happiness to happen.
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You were innocent, you shared
The prejudices that connected us
Like prayer, and the world held firm
Behind its insipid certainties.
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Is in the breath so simple.
Breathe in, breathe out,
Then tell where one begins
And the other ends.
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As the mountain hungers to be made flat
So I burn for your salvation.

Help me to forgive the airplanes
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High in the hills
a man pulls fish
from a stream.
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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?
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you strip like an ear of corn
gold & beautiful
silk tumbling
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Where I am going, I don't know
The road ahead twists out of sight

Where it will lead no one can say
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How can you kill what cannot be killed?
Why weep for those who have been taken?

Why furnish ammunition to the enemy
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Stars, ignore the crimes occurring
like catfights under the windows.

Sometimes we're ashamed
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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
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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
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I was eating minestrone
when I heard something fall
outside my apartment window.
Too dark to see much
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spring flows all around us or ought to
each field of corn is taut
with its arrows and bows
our hands can't contain
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they clamp their bits in the riding ring
kicking the sawdust behind them
all day the children mount and pace
and when the animals rest
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