June 2025 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Monthly Archives: June 2025

Inner Critic at the Beach

Audio Recordings / tagged Body Image, Comparing, Shame / June 30, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sand, sand, sand
and perfect bodies tanned

And the same sand-paper line
not mine, not mine, not mine

The Inner Critic

Audio Recordings, Family, Personal Growth / tagged Compassion, Doubt, Fear, Patterns, Shame / June 29, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Poor little Keystone Cop
(although often not so funny)
leaping from shoulder to shoulder
trying so hard to keep us safe
Yelling or whispering in each ear
the old rules based on fear

Telling us
what we should have done
and what we should never do
enforcing rules learned long ago
that may no longer be true

The voice of your mother still
nags when your room's not neat
The voice of your father
still wants you up at dawn

Your teacher and your coach
Your country and your culture
Your parents and your younger selves
with messages to keep you safe

The cop only knows
what he used to know
and still does what he was told to do
You don't have to destroy him
or shove him out the door

Just put your arm around him
and tell him
you're no longer four

Peaking of Poetry

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth, Poems about Poetry / tagged Aging, Art & Artists, Creativity / June 28, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

They speak of writers past their prime
and nothing over forty worth your time

My trick
has been to start beyond that age
with my doggerel but a starving pup

Free to write
to a hundred with room left to improve

Circling Back

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Remembering / June 27, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

All those long days of youth
before I was a poet
lived but not noted

I go back now
guided by bend grass
and broken branches

Attaching
toe tags of meaning
to departed days and friends

Don’t Worry Mate

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Humor / June 26, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Leaving Town

Audio Recordings, Relationships, Travel / tagged Despair, Home, Separation / June 25, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

With the last house at your back
and the last dog in the last yard
tired of barking

Still standing and still staring
at a line posing as horizon

The warmth and wounds of love
drying in the wind

Knowing that the world
is indeed flat
that you are only one
step from the edge
and that you will
fall off

Arm’s Length

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Remembering / tagged Distance, Observation, Perspective / June 24, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If I went back
to the old town again
I might
have to leave
again to write about it

Mossbank, Saskatchewan, circa 2025

It Helped at the Time

Audio Recordings, Family / tagged Grief, Numbing, Sugar / June 23, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Today I visited the graves of my parents
flowers for my mother
tobacco for my father
and chocolate for the orphan boy

He had a stomack ache later
but it sure helped at the time

Sweet Memories

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Denial, Diabetes / June 22, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My mother's mother
lost a leg in the sugar wars

We dragged our butts across town to see her
she dragged hers across the hosue to serve us

You would think that each visit
might have served as a caution

But, as young minds
may twist and stay twisted

I took away instead
an infinite ability to ignore the obvious

and a taste for milk and ginger cookies

Grandma Brander

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Games / June 21, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Mother would sometimes stop our play and send us to visit her mother in that little white house

She may have had grand stories to tell, about her childhood in England and Ontario and her brother lost at sea, and our grandfather whom we'd never met

What was he like - were we like him - Would we want to be

It was a leap we never took, and spent afternoons in leaps more comfortable to us all - small colourd marbles over small coloured marbles in the inscrutability of Chinese Checkers

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Christie flaman on Light Shining on CopperJuly 12, 2025
Thank you for reading me my favorite poem of all time ,anywhere. Nothing describes the loss of someone you love…
Nancy Fierstien on Hard to Get War Poems to RhymeJune 3, 2025
Thanks for sharing this one, my friend. It packs a good punch, line after line. I'll be glad to give…
Christie flaman on Going ProMay 17, 2025
Old cowboy saying: Never a horse that couldn’t be rode, never a cowboy that couldn’t be thrown Thank you for…
Ken Christopher on Going ProMay 16, 2025
That’s pretty funny, and fun to read
Nancy Fierstien on Spring Came InMay 12, 2025
You've certainly captured these crazy times with finesse and grace, my Friend!

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