GUNFIGHT AT THE YOU’RE OKAY CORRAL
Reactions are
quicker than actions
Which is why
all else being equal
the one who draws first loses
A good thing to remember
before you say the thing
you always say
that starts it all again
Author Archives: neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
PICKING ON THE BANJO
PICKING ON THE BANJO
When I pick on a banjo
it’s like a bully pickin’ on you
for your lunch money
In high school I tortured a trumpet
hitting the high notes and the low
with many a glancing blow
While Johnny’s boy, damn his hide,
could pick up any instrument
Didn’t have to think or practice
or anything
the music just told him where to put his fingers
PEOPLE OF THE EARTH
PEOPLE OF THE EARTH
People of the earth
kneeling in their gardens
all directions Mecca
AN EYE FOR AN EYE
AN EYE FOR AN EYE
Obama got Osama
right in the eye for an eye
time will tell if more or fewer die
THERE WAS A YOUNG POET NAMED JACK
THERE WAS A YOUNG POET NAMED JACK
There was a young poet named Jack
who wrote verse upon his wife’s back
It tickles she said
let’s go to the bed
And they were off to rhyme in the sack
THROUGH THE NEEDLE’S EYE
THROUGH THE NEEDLE’S EYE
Sarah N. Cleghorn 1916
The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play
Update 2011
Sarah, you’ll be pleased to know
There are no such scenes today
The children laboring in the mills
Are half a world away
THE COURAGE OF MINERS
THE COURAGE OF MINERS
For Tiger and Benny
To go down
each day
into your
grave
And rise
at end of shift
with Lazarus-like joy
– except when
you don’t
EDMONTON – LATE SEPTEMBER
EDMONTON – LATE SEPTEMBER
The leaves are dancing down the street
Leaves like the thousand children
that I never had with you
A skip, a dash, a lovely pirouette
then past, and gone
LOSSES
LOSSES
Empty as a mouth full of snow
-Lois P. Jones
We lost another calf
we lost another crop
We lost an uncle in the war
These are not like keys of city folk
that they find in their other coat
The things we lose out here
don’t come back any more
DRAGGING IT OUT
DRAGGING IT OUT
The organ donor dies
over a very long time
and in a great many places
Not immortality exactly
but at least a lingering mortality
And for those of us
who find it so hard to let go
some comfort to know
that kidney that went to a child
might keep us going for another fifty