The Man In The Desert Remembers

The Man In The Desert Remembers

(cacti, plugs and armadillos)

A. Neil Meili

Dedicated to

All my relatives

The desert shall rejoice

and bloom as the rose

Isaiah 35:1

CONTENTS

In The Beginning

Taste of Childhood

Grandparents

Moon Breathes Trees

Wind and Rain

Ripe Berries

Unspeakable

Magdalene

Church Tour of Europe

Rinpoche I and II

Breathe

Lawyer Rap

Tony Campesi

Hangin Ten with Debbie

Dorsey Breathes

Kauai

Counterpoint

Before and After Yeats

Gift Horse

Goldie

Shaman’s Stick

Remembering Socrates

Man in the Desert

IN THE BEGINNING

Small town doctor

tired and out of sorts

resenting a 3:00 a.m. delivery

and snapping at his helping nurse

Stands in awe of the first born son

come to save the ranch

One wonders if the promise of a poet

would have outweighed

his desire for his bed

TASTES OF CHILDHOOD

When I was two or three

and my mother read to me

When Alice fell down the rabbit hole

I fell down the rabbit hole

Tumbling over and over in the air

the memory is still there

Ribbon candy and real candies on the tree

Christmas chocolates made at home

from a factory recipe someone

slipped to someone on a train

Taste buds still budding

tasting with my whole body

Slowly I’ve forgotten how

only love and fear can do it now

LEARNING FROM GRANDPARENTS

From my Swiss grandfather

who dreamed and grew a prairie Eden

combining Europe and High Brazil

I learned the impossible is possible

From my English grandmother

I learned that niceness is very nice

but you can leave feeling empty

except for the cookies and milk

From my father’s mother

and my mother’s father

I learned that early death

is a form of theft

MOON BREATHES TREES

One strong slow breath each month

The moon draws the sap up the tree

When the moon is full

the tree is full

Will you still wonder now

when you feel the pull

WIND AND RAIN

Does wind linger long in the rain

to quench it’s desert thirst

Or in the day shiver

and hurry to the sunlight

At Night does it eagerly

slip through open windows

To join us under echoing roof

and kiss our skins with

moistened lips

RIPE BERRIES

Sometimes when I drink I think

that I could live inside like other people

It looks so warm and so safe

and I want so much to be there

But like a bird flying on ripe berries

I sober up against the pane

UNSPEAKABLE

The chosen people were forbidden

ever to speak the name

of God

Which is easy to understand

when you think of all

the unspeakable things

that are done

All in the name

of God

MAGDALENE

Mary Magdalene lay down

with the sons of men

And knew them as sons of God

There was no sin in Magdalene

for she saw no sin in them

Dearest of all to the carpenter’s son

was the one who could see him most clear

For there was no sin in Magdalene

and she saw no sis in him

CHURCH TOUR OF EUROPE

Churches along the Rhine look down

in dark and somber judgement

on the towns below

In Milan the stone itself is full of light

it’s celebration lifting you to God

The forefathers of all French waiters

built Notre Dame to their own glory

But I lit a candle there for Dan

and he got well

RINPOCHE AT ESALEN

Small round happy

Tibetan spirit bubbling

teaching from his words and being

“ The search for God is everything

but it is not serious ”

RINPOCHE AT ESALEN II

You cannot truly have a meditation

until it is broken he says

I sit deeper than I have ever been

deepened by 28 kindred souls

as deep as they can go

He hits the crystal bowl

one quick ringing note

A trap door beneath me opens

and I fall

BREATHE

The Buddhists say

“ Breath in all of the pain of the universe

and breath out love ”

For the longest time I thought

in my Protestant work ethic way

this is important for the good of the world

and I should be doing it

Work hard breath in

work hard transform

work hard breath out

Protesting somewhat now I see

It has nothing to do with doing at all

and little to do with me

If you do not try to stop it

you will breathe in the pain of the world

for it is all around you

If you do not try to stop it

you will become one with it all

and breathe out what you have become

I SUED TWO LAWYERS FOR 18 MONTHS

AND ALL I GOT WAS ONE RAP POEM

The road to trials

is paved with miles and miles and miles

of files and files and files and files

Piles and piles and piles and piles

of files and files and files and files

And I’m going down that road

wading through piles and piles and piles

plowing through files and files an files

And I think all of these piles of files and files

used to be trees and trees and trees and trees

And maybe these trees – some of these trees

came from woods where Robert Frost walked

the woods where paths in the wood diverged

and where he took the one less traveled

And I wonder how I got on this path

and how to get back to that place

back to that place in the woods

back where the paths diverge

Spend my days outside instead

walking through live trees

live trees instead of dead

TONY CAMPESI

AT THE ELEPHANT ROOM

Tony Campesi plays Jazz

on an old tenor sax

notes you can’t play on a new

Brass as rich as stone walls

in an old world church

soaked in a thousand years

of latin mass

Tony Campesi plays Jazz

and somebody’s cryin somebody’s dyin

somebody’s fallin in love – right now

HANGIN TEN WITH DEBBIE

When she was alive

she just so damn alive

It makes her being dead

just so damn much more dead

We were together

the day the Challenger exploded

and the day the Gulf war started

Violence all around but we never fought

We just laughed and played

and howled at the moon

And surfed ten years

on that sweet sexual edge of almost

then she died

If either of us

had leaned two degrees closer

we might have caught the perfect curl

and saved the world

Three degrees and we might have been

two reef torn bodies on the sand

but I block out scenes like that

I just see her innocent wave goodbye

I just watch the uncaught waves roll by

DORSEY BREATHES

Dorsey breathes deep

at Jacquie’s workshop

Drives through pain

like Houston traffic

Coughs up fifty years

of smog and burnt rubber

Parks under a tree in River Oaks

and lets her six year old out to play

KAUAI LIGHT SCARS

There are two

jagged lines across my palm

where I learned to use an axe at six

and a fingertip crushed by a grader at seven

There are marks made by light

that will remain forever too

here are a few still pink and new

Airport greets with morning rainbow

rare cardinal flies in for our meeting

Chinese screens roof tiles blue

getting to know you

Four hundred gathered

sacredness of Huna and Hula

A Wessel becomes a vessel

power pours through palms again

Flowers wrap the torch lit towers

dancing to Elvis the night is young

and so are we in blue Hawaii

Millennium poem a gift to all

little saint Tutu honors with a lei

passing it on is sacred enough

to say what I have to say

Rainbow in the valley of mists

forms a circle with us in the center

Walter the bear gives us a wave

to prove that we are there

A can of spam, coke, chips and thou

alone on a beach at the end of the world

COUNTERPOINT

If you’re going to grow old anyway

Consider doing it as an artist or a poet

Waxing powers may well meet the waning

Tides coming in meeting waves going out

Coals cooling as the iron tempers

BEFORE AND AFTER YEARS

The Athens of America

Timothy Leary dubbed our Austin town

Whatever opinion you had of him in life

you must admit he is dead right now

Just witness the round bellied Socrates

peddling wisdom in South Austin agoras

The poetry movements in galleries

still afoot about Sixth Street

from midnight to dawn

Comedy and tragedy enough in Hyde Park

to have no need for Greek theater

And yet the center will not hold

Attack is everywhere

Enemies with impervious armor

threaten to cover the sacred South

Monthly skirmishes break out

between the Nobles and their foes

along the Northern Borders

While all the young Turks

fill the Parthenon with dynamite

oblivious to every warning

the roof may blow off

THE GIFT HORSE

It is not so simple

If you question every action

you will find forces pull in other directions

If you look in the mouth of the horse

not all teeth with be straight

and many may have been grinding

for some time

It is more likely

that happiness will be found

by looking deep in the mouth of the adage

GOLDIE AT THE HOLIDAY INN

At the Holiday Inn at the Dallas market

They have a goldfish named Goldie

who has his own quarium

and swims around lonely all day

At the Holiday Inn at the Dallas market

You can sleep late

and make love

and eat room service

and light a candle if you bring one

And Goldie don’t care

if you sleep late

and make love

and eat room service

but he sure do like that candle

SHAMAN’S STICK

When dead Shaman’s spirits

pick a new Shaman to carry the stick

they always start by making them sick

In every tribe in the natural world

they whisper and press the same old trick

you’re gonna be sick till you pick up the stick

Pick up the stick or your relative’s dead

pick up the stick or you stay in your bed

you’re gonna be sick till you pick up the stick

Life won’t be easy if you pick up the stick

life won’t be easy if you lay down the stick

You can’t teach a dead Shaman any new trick

so most times it pays to just pick up the stick

you’re gonna be sick till you pick up the stick

you heal the sick when you pick up the stick

REMEMBERING SOCRATES

Last walk on the Acropolis

Last look at the Parthenon

Last time through the door

of low roofed home

Last glass of wine at kitchen table

the tightness in the chest

Last talk with pupils and friends

comforting around the couch

Bitter taste of hemlock

Dead cold creeping from feet

up through legs, torso, chest

Spot of light leaps upward from brow

Where is Socrates asks the guide

did he die

Socrates is the light I reply

THE MAN IN THE DESERT

The man in the desert remembers

and a tear begins to form

A tear so long unshed

ninety percent of the water is gone

Dragging it’s chain of crusted drops

it carves a white canyon

down his long and leathered face

A cracked tongue between cracked lips

reaches to taste it – Oh so sweet

Back Quote

“Children guessed (but only a few)

and down the forgot as up they grew…”

E.E. Cummings