Travel – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Travel

A Farewell to Eric

Relationships, Travel / tagged Death / October 6, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In nineteen seventy five
In the rainforests of Venezuela
Eric lived for a year with the
Yanomami
He also lived with the Hunkpapa
the little people that only the
shamans see
unless you toke what the shamans toke
then you can see them too
When Eric was ready to go home
the Yanomami gathered by the river
and wailed and mourned as if he’d died
Eric says his goodbyes and tries to start his boat
Tuned up, new plugs and all, but it just won’t start
He pulls and pulls while the
tribesmen wail
After what seems like a very long time
the shaman comes down to the boat
and asks Eric if he’s sure he must leave
Eric insists again that the time has come
The shaman admits that he has placed
Hunkpapas in the motor to keep him there
He pulls them out one by one
juggling them hot in his hands
and throws them steaming into the river
One pull and the motor starts
In two thousand and twelve in Austin
Eric is ready to go home again
Many wail and wish that he would stay
but he knows that it is time to leave
At times like this it helps
to have a shaman for a friend
John Hawk flies in and reads
Eric’s poems to the Hunkpapas
and watches as the little people leave
It takes a few pulls, but the motor starts

Seoul Sunsets

Flight, Haiku, Nature, String Too Short To Save, Travel / tagged Korea / September 4, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Watercolor sky
boats islands and water too
sunset landing Seoul

Image by Paul KIm from Pixabay

I Go Where the Wild Goose Goes

Travel / September 3, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Smiling tip of the V
at the start of every trip

Last bird on the left
dragging my feathers
home

CABBIES OF ATHENS

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Greece / September 1, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Chaos pounds over dead civilizations
horns blare battle cries, fists shake the air

Taxi driver warriors slash and stab
and play pirate with the meter

And woe befall the coward fare
who doubts their courage and their skill
by any attempt to buckle up that belt

Momma in Mykonos

Audio Recordings, Travel / August 31, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

marolina says, enjoy the room
my eighty two year old mother
lives on the first floor under your stairs
call on her if you need anything

momma doesn’t understand our English
but most important that we understand
she could understand, but chooses not to

She also knows that her daughter
must rent the rooms above her head
but she will not look up

In Greece

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Travel / tagged mythology / August 30, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In Greece I remember and meet myself everywhere
I am Socrates questioning
I am the athlete striving, the architect planning
the builder building, the potter shaping
the sculptor seeking, the warrior dying
and the poet pointing

In Greece
I am all men and all gods as well
and I remember how many times, in this life alone
I have pushed the rock endlessly uphill
carried the world on my shoulders
had my liver eaten by the savage bird

How many times
I have fallen in love with my own reflection
reached out for the sweet grapes and sweet water
to find them moving always beyond my grasp
been forced to echo only what others have said
tied myself to the mast to resist the siren’s call

Fought in a thousand wars full out on the open field or sea
or hidden in the belly of a wooden horse

Chinese Restaurant

Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering, Travel / August 28, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sorry John Donne
but some men may be islands

or castaways
in small prairie towns
fifty miles by bad road
from any other of their race

Tall walled booths along one side
twisted-wire chairs and tables too
my father and his friends had coffee
I think mine was cream soda

We may have eaten there
but I don’t remember
certainly at five or six
I would not have imagined
that we were as strange to him
as he was to us

All I ever knew
of the inner man
was the pungent foreignness
of the old two-holer out back
Fast forward six years or so
to small town of Mossbank
on the south side of the lake

A chubby twelve year old
sits in a low walled booth
with his best buddies
and another Chinese man
in another Chinese café
serves up Vanilla Cokes
(when vanilla still had alcohol)
and marks our tabs with
Chinese signs

I asked him what my three mean

Big – Small – Happy

1 Reply

Too Crowded

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Ranch Life, Travel / August 13, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My folks took some time off in the sixties
from their Saskatchewan ranching and
traveled down through South Texas

One day they stopped to talk to an
old cowboy sittin and a wittlin
on a rickety ranch porch

When he found out where they were from he said
“Say – do you know a man up there
by the name of Bill Prior?”

They said “Yes, he’s an old bachelor who lives up
past our north pasture, why do you ask?”

“Well” he said, “about 1928 Bill and I are out
lookin for some strays when we see another rider
coming over the furthest hill”

Bill said to me, “It’s gettin too damn crowded
down here, I’m heading for Canada”

“He turned his horse North and I haven’t
seen him since”

1 Reply

Inner Critic on Holiday

Travel / August 5, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You will get lost in Paris
it is not your fault, it was planned that way

You may find it unforgivably gauche
not to know the left bank from the right

Let it go

It is not necessary to criticize oneself here
they have waiters for that purpose

And looking out, not in
you may stumble Americanly
upon Marie’s little side street shop
with bread as new as the cheese is old
and a three dollar wine to bridge them

or catch a brief glimpse of that seriously happy young man
pedaling down the very center of the Champs d’Elysee
one foot and a base fiddle resting on his skateboard

Ursa Erectus

Nature, Travel / July 26, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Just outside the park
bear black as east slope coal
stands cub curious as we

The bright blue car goes by
he blinks an eye phone pic

Tells friends
“You had to be there”

Image by skeeze from Pixabay

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