Song Of Shams Poem by Mike Finley

Yes it's true I was born full grown
and speaking a language
it took twenty years to forget.

And I had the gift of total recall
remembering ages before me and after.

Each birth a detonation,
each breath a crater in the sky
each pair of lungs a palpitating moth.

Yes the rumors can all be confirmed.
There are no false prophets.
Whoever you doubted you shouldn't have.
Nobody lies.

The holy protest,
'One need not travel wide to find wisdom.'
And philosophers roam the length of their attics.
I say, 'Stick to your solemnity
but the world flips by like a roll of bills
at the ear of God.'

True, all true, the claims of assassins,
the letters of suicides, even
the innocent bystander's excuse.

Now bite into bread and see even further.
The steam off the ocean,
the Bedouin's fish,
the fly by your ear,
the ear of that fly.

Friends tell me I've lost my grip
and I say Yes
and rise into space.
Friends tell me I'm seeing things.
I say Yes!


(1976)