2002

MeilieM

(OHWHO)

A. Neil Meili

For Maia

and her Buddha smile

(photo of baby)

CONTENTS

WIND

BLUE EYED BOY

REED BETWEEN THE LIONS

KURT

AUNT EILEEN

MARY OLIVER

POET LAUREATE

HOLOCOST

IUDITA

WEB

THE LADY WHO EATS SNOW

SUMMER ON THE INDIAN RIVER

SEVEN YEARS

THREE STRIKES

STRING TOO SHORT TO SAVE

CHERNOBYL

TERRORISTS

POOR LITTLE BUSH

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

WHEN THE STORMS CAME

THE THERAPIST PRACTICES HER ART

WIND CLOUD

Once the wind

thought it was a cloud

When it was told

this was not so

It cried and cried

until it was only

wind again

BLUE EYED BOY

Blue eyed boy

blasts off from breakfast like a quail on a rail

Collie dog leaps on board

and they’re off across the prairie

barely touching the tops of hills

Sun gives warmth or cloud gives shade

all depending on his whim

birds and rocks and swaying grass

everything living embraces him

Burrs don’t stick and thorns don’t prick

fences joining in the play

happily turn their barbs away

Floating along on the wings of four

not long now till they slam that door

REED BETWEEN THE LIONS

My mother’s will was always

stronger than my won’t

My father’s won’t was always

stronger than my will

Caretaker soft or Cowboy strong

How quick I learned to change my face

to face the faces that I faced

I can still spin that mirror now so you

can see the face you want to see

But neither you nor I will know

which one is me

KURT

I am sure that the life

of my dear friend’s brother

held great meaning for a great many

He will be missed

My poems will miss him

He would take them down

into the greatness of his being

wrap them in music and meaning

and sing them back out to the world

I am sure that Kurt touched many people

in ways they have not been touched before

nor will ever be again

My poems join in the mourning

for that touch

AUNT EILEEN

(1912 – 2000)

The death of my aunt

came when I had been at the sea

and my pores were open

She entered quickly

Dragging shadows of other deaths

aunts, uncles, father, friends

All loud with the clanking

of the chains that still bind

MARY OLIVER

Of all the poets I admire

only one did I envy

How she could take us all on her journey

remind us of the wild beauty of our lives

and the soft animal of our bodies

It is disowned parts of us I know

that we hold too high or low

And yet I wanted to go where she could go

This year in the merry month of May

on a trip in search of other things

a book I didn’t know she’d written

in a town where I didn’t know she lived

I hung five days like her hummingbird

on the green wheel of it’s wings

Her flowers were my food

her town became my town

her dunes became my dunes

Sip by sip on that Cape Cod shore

I began to envy her less

and love her more

And that pretty green stone

I was taking with me

I threw it back into the sea

THE POET LAUREATE AT NINTY FIVE

The new poet laureate is ninty five

he’s been working on his demons

for a long long time

Six weeks before the poet was born

his father burns his demons out

by drinking carbolic acid in the park

Mother burns father’s pictures

forbids mention of his name

Young Stanley finds one in the attic

and asks about the man

She tears the picture to shreds

without a word

and slaps him hard

six decades later he still felt the sting

Bright boy gets scholarship to Harvard

okay but forget about teaching classes

these were not the days when a Jewish boy

could teach their ivy league asses

Marries a poet, move to honeymoon farm

she disappears never to be heard from again

The new poet laureate has had plenty of pain

The new poet laureate is ninty five

each day he wakes as a poet

not a man of ninty five

still seeing everything new

still glad to be alive

HOLOCOST IN THE NEW MILLENIUM

This is the age of the coming of age

of the children

The children

who are the children of neither

are the children of both

And this may be the last time

this can be healed in time

Or are we to have a new calendar

so much like the old

where 2000 pages are torn off

and the pinup remains the same

Already 60 years A.D. (Anno Dachau)

still counting still counting still counting

FOR IUDITA

(child of holocaust survivors)

Artists without hands

hold the brush with their feet

Without hands or feet

hold the brush in their teeth

As for me and my friend

all that remains is the navel

And small circles

in the center of

the canvas

INTO THE WEB

In you is the love making

of teeth and claws

and the severing of limbs

While Mister Black Widow

even knowing the end of the act

Leaps into the web and

pulls it to him with

all eight arms

THE LADY WHO EATS SNOW

There is a lovely sad lady in Texas

who eats snow in her dreams

writes about young wolves

and the order of the hunt

During the long dark winter

the lady, who eats snow

grows larger and nearer to herself

The ice of the river is in her glass

she is two margueritas short of a howl

Soon she will dream

of Alpha wolves

and water

SUMMER ON THE INDIAN RIVER

BERT BUILDS A SHED

Bert is a gentle man

wakes early with no hurry

and drives nails all day

with a gentle fury

GRANDMOTHER GEORGINA

moves between the worlds

ties them together

three stitches to each bead

MANIWAKI MOON

Through the sacred fire at the sacred lake

by the tree twice lightning struck

sacred tobacco and sacred cedar

burned in a sacred way

We circle and leave by the Eastern door

SUSAN

A boat of beauty

cuts through chaos

gentle order in her wake

MICHAEL

Thirty years and more

since the priest in plaid

passed on the madness that

drives us through a wondering world

BILL

lives at the top of the hill

four bulging disks rack his back

music and love still flow through

2CATS, 2 DOGS AND A 5 YEAR OLD

The orange cat has orange eyes

Orion lost two teeth

dogs bark at every care

but Alura scared off the bear

MIKE, PAM AND BAILEY

Solid enough for a Mad Bear to lean on

mother enough for the world to suckle

Downs baby magic lifts the whole world up

ON THE TRAMPOLINE

Alura and I jump till we’re tired

decide my leg is broken in two places

and rest looking up at yellow butterflies

and squirrels playing in the twinning tree

as fall winds rock it toward a winter’s sleep

The young nurse writes prescriptions

lays on healing hands

sprays medicine from an atomizer pen

a few sharp stick injections in the arm

and I am well again

SEVEN YEARS

Lovers and true friends

are mirrors where we see

the better parts of you and me

Death

the mirror breaker

these reflections interrupt

An many there are who choose

to follow the sparkling shards

before the seven years is up

THREE STRIKES

My sportswriter friend has Alzheimer’s now

and I wonder what happens

behind that bright brow

When we were kids, he was the guy

who knew each homer and pop fly

and every players RBI

Grew up to travel with the pros

what he didn’t know why nobody knows

And now soggy brained he tromps

through sub sequitorial swamps

the mind once quick as cats

drowning among the stats

STRING TOO SHORT TO SAVE

RAP

Brevity is the wit of Soul

LYSISTRADA

No peace, no piece

SALT LAKE CITY

On silver blades

they turn a country gold

sacred alchemy

THE AUTOCRAT HAS A STROKE

No longer able to make things happen

he still retains the power to stop them

SLEEP

I dreamed I had insomnia

and woke to find I wasn’t sleeping

BLIND ROOSTER

Afraid of missing daybreak

crows all night

RECURRING DREAM

Trapped in a theatre

watching Groundhog Day

TEXAS 2002

Every day is the fourth of July

as those flyin flags go flyin by

and the glow of rednecks lights the sky

THE DAY DREAMER AT TWELVE

I dream too much the teacher says

he doesn’t like to see

anything that handwriting

can’t bring down to a D

NEWTON’S APPLE IS STILL FALLING

think about the gravity of that

MUSHROOM CLOUDS

When she seeded the clouds with mescaline

the snowflakes fell each singing a song

like the tastes on her tongue

no two the same

COFFEE

No one can laugh on decaf

AWARENESS

If a pickpocket sees a saint

he only sees his pockets

If a saint sees a pickpocket

he only sees his soul

Wise man sees soul and covers pocket

MEMORY

What I remember most is

the earlier the memory

the more space to store it

PLACEBO

When it comes to medical ills

60% feel better with the sugar pills

So obviously for complete relief

we just need a little more belief

THERA AFTERNOON

Black cat sleeps

dreams flickering on an eye

long since blind

VOICE DIALOGUE

The facility of the facilitator to facilitate

depends on the faces of the facilitator

the facilitator has the facility to face

SALVADORE DALI AS ROCK STAR

Fails because of melting guitar

SILK ROAD

A thousand worms on a mulberry tree

As soft as they spin and as hard as they try

can never match the silk of your inner thigh

FREEWAYS – HOUSTON

Every day – high tide and low

the same metal corks float in and out

Unable to escape the pull of silver

and the carbon covered moon

WINTER NIGHT – PRAIRIE

Coyote joins me

howling at the moon

Much lonelier to appear

in a million city eyes unseen

CHERNOBYL

Nature breaking free of science

floats its angry cloud to Red Square

Science in self defense – seeds the clouds

A gentle rain falls with the deadly ash

No one is harmed, if you don’t count

trees and peasants

TERRORISTS

The Eleventh of September

A day the world should long remember

Pillars of democracy brought to the ground

Innocent thousands dead all around

New York, New York, you say

I was still thinking of Chile

I was still thinking

of Nineteen Seventy Three

POUR LITTLE BUSH HAIKU

Poor little Bush

when grail contains father’s balls

crusade will be long

Poor little bush

when insides become dry

daughters will drink

Poor little bush

becomes head of Goliath

in time for stone

Poor little Bush

flying magic carpet bombers

into Ali Baba’s cave

Poor Little Bush

when stepping on Florida

remember swamp

DOONESBURY

by Garry Trudeau

comic

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

Collateral damage

is the disease of the day

and the greatest cause of dyin

is just getting in the way

Yes people are dyin who have no say

people all dyin just from getting in the way

In Palestine it’s Arafat

that they’re all aiming at

And the bombers of Allah

want Sharon to be gone

Refugee camps and ice cream shops

the bombin and the dyin just never stops

and nobody’s factions own up to their actions

so it’s all reactions to reactions to reactions

with all the weapons piled on one side

and the other side reduced to suicide

Bush wants Hussein

Hussein wants the bomb

And half a million children die

who can’t spell embargo and don’t know why

Carpet bombers killing in wave after wave

while Bin Laden sits stills safe in his cave

more Afghanis dead than in both towers

doesn’t impress the press or the powers

Children in uniform may be innocent too

killed if you don’t join, what would you do

Big business and the army

have screwed the world brown

but they’re not the ones dyin

when the towers go down

Yes collateral damage

is the disease of the day

and the greatest cause of dyin

is still getting in the way

The feds had weapons that gave off sparks

And now Waco is full of Joan of Arcs

A crime that leads to Oklahoma City

and day care there was far from pretty

Yes an epidemic is under way, and a lot of

little children with nothing to say

dying of the disease of just

getting in the way

WHEN THE STORMS CAME

When the storms came

and I started them I hid

When the storms came

and you started them I ran

When the storms came

and the world started them

I ran to you and hid

THE THERAPIST PRACTICES HER ART

Dorsey paints with people

dips into their hearts

where all colors

have merged

to mud

***

Gently

lays them out

ultra violet to infra red

spaces between clearly seem

and hands them back the brush

Back cover quote:

Stressed was I ere I saw desserts

a.n.m.