Author Archives: neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

PROGRESS

Travel / / by

PROGRESS

The roads of St. Lucia
are mostly narrow and precarious

Trucks careening inches from cliff edge
chickens and children clinging
to the wooden sides

Car horns doeplering their nearness
to a blind curve
where one must cede
or both will crash

Slow speeds
and quick reflexes
scare the island food
out of tourists
but keep the locals safe

Close to the beach on the Caribbean side
people from away, in their wisdom
and generosity have build five miles
of well-marked, well-paved
perfectly straight road

Where you can drive sixty
and the drivers of St. Lucia now
quickly kill themselves and others

LOSING

Poems about Poetry / / by

LOSING

If the physicists are right
we may share molecules
with all those who went before
like Shakespeare, Socrates,
Cervantes, and Tagore

It has been suggested from time to time
that I would be well to go on a diet

but it would feel too much
like parting with old friends

ORIENTAL MEDICINE

Haiku, Nature / / by

ORIENTAL MEDICINE

A haiku or two
raindrops are falling outside
outside of time

A haiku or two
a day risks loss in doing
a friend drops by

A haiku or two
Van Gogh paints in Japanese
starry, starry, night

A haiku or two
a geisha now beside me
pillow on her back

A haiku or two
politics and bad news fade
cycle is longer

A haiku or two
calming the winds of the mind
stilling the waters

A haiku or two
a walk taken with eyes open
is a workshop

Brief the touch
heals receiver, sender too
a Reiki haiku

The moon is full
the Mayan calendar turns
blossoming begins

Life is a haiku
simpler deeper than we know
rhymes between lines

THE BALLAD OF BARRY BARACK

Uncategorized / tagged , / / by

THE BALLAD OF BARRY BARACK

There once was a Halfro-American boy
his Kenyan father’s glancing blow
and his Mid-West mother’s pride and joy
how diddee how diddee how diddee how do

Raised where two directions are all you can see
toward the mountains and towards the sea
How diddee how diddee how do

And Barry was the white side
and Barack was the black
as handsome as a Tiger
and sharp as a tack
how diddee how diddee
how diddee how do

Went off to Harvard to run the review
and streets of Chicago some real good to do
How diddee how diddee how do

A wise young man with a funny old name
America you’ll never be the same
America you’ll never be the same
How diddee how diddee how do

He didn’t change all prejudice
but he sure did make a dent
and that is how he got to be
the U.S. President

sing

how diddee how diddee
how did he how did he
how do

THE WINGS BENEATH HIS WIN

Uncategorized / tagged , , , / / by

THE WINGS BENEATH HIS WIN

Ask not who should Obama thank
but who we should thank for Obama

There are a million threads that make up
the quilt of America’s growing up

You could follow one
back to a university
in Tuskegee Alabama in 1881
to its first teacher Booker T. Washington
who hired George Washington Carver,
who lived to see it become
the home of the Tuskegee airmen
who fought with equal skill
and double courage on
two fronts at once

Their performance and sacrifice
inspiring Harry Truman
on July 26th, 1948 to issue executive
order 9981 directing
equality of treatment and opportunity
in the armed forces

And if those weren’t threads enough
The Tuskegee Song was written in 1902
by Paul Laurence Dundar, classmate
and friend of Orville Wright and
set to the tune of Fair Harvard

We thank thee, we bless thee, we pray for thee years
Imploring with grateful accord
Full fruit for thy striving, time longer to strive
Sweet love and true labor’s reward

Yes indeed Tuskegee, we all thank thee