Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Art & Artists

Poems and stories about art, fine art, painting, sculpture, artists

Dennicia

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Art & Artists / February 3, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Judging a city by its traffic
Houston is caffeine and constipation

Two days we swear
we're on a walking tour by car
so at last we decide to take a cab across town

She pulls up wearing a smile
that would get us there if headlights failed
and a name that you could call a continent

Joseph Conrad in his Heart of Darkness
might have written a different book
if he'd been in that cab and not on that boat

Sacrifice

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Addiction, Alcohol, Art & Artists, Drugs / February 2, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The Kuala Khans from minds
broken loose by
and all too soon broken by drugs

The alcohol that so many have found
as the key to their heaven and their hell

And all the wounds of daily battles
with truths wrestled to a fall

Makes me wonder if writers
like mothers and forests
sometimes lay down their bodies
that their children may grow

Idylling

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Art & Artists, Christmas, Gifts, Holiday, Relaxation / December 30, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Packages unwrapped
tree and lights still up
two more days till new year
and nothing needing to be done

Leftovers warming in the oven

Lingering over gift of
Nocturne, Poems to Linger Over
by Marilyn Lightstone

Rumi, Hafiz, Cohen, Collins and more
some I’ll steal from outright
some take in and let them bubble some

Nocturne https://plumleafpress.com/product/nocturne/

1 Reply

Maudie in Our Home

Audio Recordings, Haiku / tagged Art & Artists, Courage, Maud Lewis, Winter / December 29, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Maudie in our home
warmer than her little one
courage on display

You can learn more about Maud Lewis and her art here
https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/maud-lewis/biography/

For Louise

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Art & Artists, Louise Glück / October 27, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Everything returns, but what returns is not what went away - Louise Glück

I never knew she was here until she left
It was in all the papers

There were pictures, I liked her from them
got a bunch of her books, not so sure now

She won a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize
I'll have to take the judges word for it

If she came back, I'd take her to tea
where we could talk of anything - but poetry

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/louise-gluck

Why He Didn’t Go To Mary Oliver’s Workshop

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth, Poems about Poetry / tagged Art & Artists, Fear / October 12, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Reasons he didn’t go
to the intimate week-long
with the world famous poet
on an island off New England

What he told himself …

It was expensive
(he had the money)

He had commitments
(easy enough to change)

Difficult to get to
(his travel skills were legend)

What he didn’t tell himself …

He might have to on his return
burn everything he’d ever written

Thanksgiving Poem: How-to

Audio Recordings, Nature, Poems about Poetry / tagged Art & Artists, Autumn, Fall, Gratitude, Holiday, Thanksgiving / October 9, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Don’t write right away, but soon.
Watch the leaves and the light fully
Connect – allow – relax – delight.
Too quick is a tourist in a selfie,
Taj Mahal untended over left shoulder.
Wait too long and the phone will ring

Write a few hundred poems before – good and bad,
so fear of the water doesn’t keep you on shore
And how about a title throwing two shadows
(as Mary Oliver encourages)
an easy one here with movement and the season

Do not say leaves look toward the sun, an object,
but towards the rising of the sun, an event
one more evocative of motion

Note the angle of the sun,
so low on the horizon that is shines upwards
into the twisting, twirling, falling leaves,
as they lift at times in slightly gusting breeze

If pirouetting is what you see, bring the ballet in

And gratitude, of course, and on what day

Grandmother Georgina

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged Art & Artists, First Nations, Native, Reconcilliation, Tradition, Wisdom / September 28, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Bemused

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Travel / tagged Art & Artists, Gratitude / September 17, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

It is never wise to be
at all ungrateful to your muse

Though times she picks to bring her gifts
are ones few of us would choose

She does live on a mountain in Greece
while I'm scribbling in Texas at two AM
She's bright and alert and off to work
because it's nine in the morning to her

Karolina

Audio Recordings, Relationships, Travel / tagged Art & Artists, Greece, Independence / September 9, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Artist Laureate of Mykanos
her adopted town floats above the canvas

Windmills dance on the hills
church domes and white houses
rebound light across the narrow lanes

Ships bob on the bluest water
watched by pink pelican and faithful dog

In her pictures handsome Greek men
work the boats and bars

Forty years from Boston town
she knows too much of these men
but the island nights get cold

Her art raised their two children

–it cost a lot

but to marry one of these
patriarchetypical sons of pirates
would have cost more soul
than this artist or her art would pay

Read more about Karolina of Mykonos

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Anonymous on CirclesJanuary 18, 2026
Both Gloria and I were touched by your poem. Congrats. Tom and Gloria
LeoraLawrence Porter on Sacred DanceJanuary 18, 2026
Thank you, from an unknowing dancing healer! as for my liking… While I greatly, greatly appreciate your clarity of voice…
barbara joy on MessagesJanuary 16, 2026
profound
Eda Lishman on For the PoetryJanuary 7, 2026
Neil: what a daily gentlre reminder ...this broight me many memories of walking out into the open prairie searching for…
NEIL MEILI on Grocery Shopping in AustinDecember 13, 2025
Thanks Pamela, Love to see some of your haiku and you and Pamela in the new year. All blessings, Neil…

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