2001

God Bless

The World

Copyright 2001

A. Neil Meili

For all those who suffer

through the slowness

of our learning

CONTENTS

Elbow room

Greece

Le Crotoy

Chartres

Coffee House

Faces

September

Dreams

Autumn

Harbor

Old Movies

Shadow Boxing

An Old Song

Old Ways of War

Debbie

The Hanged Man

Black Hills of Dakota

PROLOGUE

November 22, 2001

U.S. Thanksgiving – Houston, Texas

Having decided to fast instead of gorge, and

looking back in gratitude and awe at the last

year, I have decided to prepare for you a

small meal of impressions

Dorsey, ever a source of inspiration and joy,

is tapping out changes to a new manual in

the next room. Feels good to know that her

gifts are for others as well as myself.

Probably go to Galveston Beach tomorrow,

where she walked on September tenth.

Profoundly, and as it turns out, prophetically

touched by a feeling of the end of summer

and an end of innocence

I was in Canada at the time and remained

T.V. free; A week helping my brother re-floor

his cabin at Candle Lake in Saskatchewan,

and then joining some wonderful old friends

and new for Canadian Thanksgiving at an

Alberta Rocky Mountain retreat.
Can’t help but think that we are indeed in

‘speed up’ and on the teetering edge of

something profound here. I still remember a

Tibetan Rimpoche at Esalen teaching us

about having compassion for all beings in

the universe. The problem, he said, was that

we had no idea how to do that, or where to

start. He suggested that we should sit in

silence and think of one person who’s pain

would be as our own. A child, parent, lover,

or whoever. To really feel that pain, and to

then add people one at a time as long as we

could maintain the feeling. When we were

unable to do this we should stop, and try

again later. We have up to now been unable

to get our heads and hearts around the

thousands of deaths from war and natural

disasters around the world. September the

11^th. cracked that open to a point where 6,000

people got into our hearts at one time. There

is evidence that this is spreading to our

concern for the citizens of Afghanistan and

other parts of the world. I pray that it is true.

Part of the ‘speed up’ is in the learning curve.

In the last year we have been in five

Canadian Provinces, and sixteen U.S. States

(seven of them new to me), as well as

Holland, Greece, and France. learning lots,

and passing some of it along at workshops

and readings.

Want to express deep gratitude to two of our

principal teachers, Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone,

originators of the Psychology of the Selves, or

Voice Dialogue work. The timeliness of their

vision of how each of us as persons, as well

as all nations contain a multitude of selves,

covering the whole spectrum from saint to

terrorist; some owned, and some disowned,

and how different our choices and actions

can be when we embrace all of them, hold

the tension of the opposites and act from a

place of awareness.

On the following page is a story off of the

internet that I would like to share

Would also like to say that I remain excited

and hopeful that maybe the world is indeed

unfolding as it should, and that in any case I

do not really have enough information to be

a pessimist.

Love, and a happy thanksgiving to all,

Neil

THOUGHTS TO PONDER

An old Native American grandfather was

talking to his grandson about how he felt

about the tragedy ( 9-11 ) and what should be

done.

He said “I have two wolves fighting in my

heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry,

violent one. The other wolf is the loving

compassionate one.”

“So,” asked the grandson, “which wolf will

win the fight of your heart?”

“The one that I feed,” answered the

grandfather

ELBOW ROOM RAP

Poems know where they come from

My poems grew up in the wide open spaces

soft rolling hills and prairie lakes

You can lay a word down here in places

that no one would step on in ten years

My poems mostly come on gentle

and soft and safe like that

But

when my poems

come to the big cities

and the buildings start leanin in on them

(and now fallin in)

and the air gets thick with cars and people

my poems, I say my poems, start to panic

They start to talk

in short / hard / words

they flail around in all directions

they want to be rap poems

they want to be jackhammers

they want to be big guns

They want to aim their decibels

at all those Jericho walls

and they want them down

they want them down

right now

THEY SAY

Gimme some space

get outta my face

THEY SAY

gimme some space

get outta my face

THEY SAY

I need my place

gotta have someplace

I need my place

gotta have someplace

THEY SAY

You can’t see me

gotta turn it up

THEY SAY

you can’t hear me

gotta turn it up

MY POEMS SAY

HELP!

GREECE 2001

We take the boat back to Athens

cold and windy and a little rough

Dorsey lies down all the way

If she is Helen returned

she might again cause the launching

of a thousand ships

but she would not sail on one

I have an ouzo and man the bow

swells rising through my feet

feeling the eternity of the sea

When the islands are out of site

I still feel and could steer

by their shape in the winds

THE BELLS OF LE CROTOY

In the little village by the Baie

bells still wake you every day

And since not all the churches agree

we wait while each has it’s pretty say

then snuggle back for a little nap

because a bell is just a bell

and we’re on holiday

If we had really listened

we might have have heard them say

We are the bells Jeanne d’ Arc heard

breaking over walls of prison stone

the morning of her walk to Rouen

and then never heard again

We are the bells Jules Verne heard

rattling rough shuttered windows

get up lazy writer and grasp that pen

you have leagues to write fore you rest again

We are the bells that the fisherman heard

on the mornings behind their names

on the monument to men lost at sea

heard last before going to sea

CHARTRES CATHEDRAL MAY 9, 2001

Standing at last

in medieval thought made visible

on hundred and seventy three of the most

beautiful stained glass windows in the world

ten thousand figures in glass and stone

Feeling the light and form from feelings

Dorsey and I drift apart

pulled for a moment by different magnets

I look up I have no words

I beckon her over she crosses the rough stone

I kiss her gently hold her a moment and

point to the small center window

high in the west side of the south wing

Where light breaking through cloud

throws fractured beams

through centuried dust

in an exact way and at an exact angle

that it has never slanted before

and will never slant again

We wander in awe

together and apart

light candles, marvel at the art

Famous labyrinth where penitents

crawled three football fields on their knees

Without knowing it had once been there

I miss the Minotaur in the middle

As evening falls I sit on a stone step

by the central altar

watching

for along time the sun as it sinks

rising in the West Rose Window

From the center

each ring moving outward

moves towards me in explosion 3D

Again I have no words

The words are

From the questionable hand

of the undeniable God

a universe flung forth

in crystal cacophony

and order

COFFEE HOUSE HOUSTON

Sitting outside around the round table

Dallas and Buda and the boys

coffee cigarettes and stories

Inside of each, tables within tables

other Budas, other Dallas’

votes being taken and taken again

A clear enough majority

though far from unanimous

Texas sunshine helped the swing

Fine then, another cigarette

another coffee – one more story

nobody’s in a hurry round here

Black pages with skyline image

9 – 11

Hiroshima, Baghdad

And a thousand other places

This time with faces

9-11

New York September

Two new holes in the sky

Children ask why

9/11 DREAMS

In the dream

I look up from my desk

into the smile on the madman’s face

in that long eternal moment

before he wrecks the place

In the dream

I am old and frail on a mis stepped step and

I am the young and strong who catch my eye

as pushed and pushing they pass me by

and will live with it till they wake or die

In the dream

I am the man in uniform

climbing endless stairs against a human sea

only to find them endlessly

folding in on me

In the dream

I am the woman in the chair

that two mean carried down the stair

gripping the wheels as I hear them say

the lady is still standing in the bay

9-11

New York autumn

Trees fall with their leaves

Dark clouds rise

9-11

New York harbor

Twin Titanics sinking

Too few lifeboats

9-11

Old movies new

Easterns and Westerns star God

Many tickets sold

9-11

Bin Ladden and Bush

Projectiles can’t kill projections

Shadow boxing

LET’S NOT SING

THAT OLD SONG AGAIN

Home home on the (firing) range

where the Bush and the Bin Ladden play

where seldom is heard an encouraging word

and the sky’s full of gunsmoke all day

OLD WAYS OF WAR

or

(time to be lookin up)

Still wrapping themselves in tanks

old warriors fighting wars on the ground

Like Saddam and the Taliban soon found

when others struck from the air

the safety just wasn’t there

As armor that they thought would save

became a target and a grave

Still wrapping themselves in flags

Government no longer of, for, or by a people

Like Saddam and the Taliban, now find

when others strike from anywhere

the safety just isn’t there

As the land of free and home of brave

becomes a target and a grave

THOUGHTS

ON

A DEBBIE MOMENT

Debbie, a great friend of mine, died too young

and in too much pain in Houston about five

years ago now

This moment just sneaked up on me

earlier this year.

Can’t help wondering how many people

are having Debbie moments now in New

York and around the world from what

happened just six weeks ago

How many people in the world in the last

five years having Debbie moments from

a hole blown in their sky

A DEBBIE MOMENT

I was noticing a gain the other day

watching a movie, strangely enough

called “Remains of the Day”

that even though you died

you haven’t gone away

In the movie

a bird gets trapped in the house

and tries to fly

through the high ceiling glass

Remember the time in the office in Austin

when the sparrow was trying in panic to

escape in this way

And you spoke to it in your stardust voice

and it landed in trust in your hands

I remember the windows you flew against

and it’s a bit of a comfort to me

To see you and the sparrow

both flying free

THE HANGED MAN

White hands red

with the blood of eighty

million red men dead

With a soul

that’s been through a Sioux or two

Upside down on a tarot card

hanging between the worlds

BLACK HILLS OF DAKOTA

The red mines his life for irony

while the white man tears the earth for iron

But treaties protect the sacred stones

as long as rivers flow and grass grow

paper covers rock

in the Black Hills of Dakota

Gold in the Black Hills, end of treaty

scissors cut paper

in the Black Hills of Dakota

But sacred stones outlive them all

rock breaks scissors

in the Black Hills of Dakota

Back cover quote:

“One’s best protection

is to be in harmony.”

Jack Schwarz