Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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An Invitation

Uncategorized / September 21, 2018 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Neil wanders the world in awe – Mirrors and metaphor everywhere. You can join him on this journey with a Poem in your Inbox every day.  CLICK HERE to start today

Holding Up The Line

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Coffee, Harvest / September 23, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
Barista, barista, if only you knew
what I'd like to order from you

Barista, barista
please, if you please
cold coffee in a Mason jar
like Momma sent to the fields
at harvest and at haying time

That much sugar 
and that much cream
and no one wiped the lip
when they passed it round

Barista, barista
there's nothing I see
on that long fancy menu for me

I guess
I just came in to smell the coffee
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Putting Up Preserves

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Canning, Garden, Harvest, Preserving, Survival, Vegetables / September 22, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
On the prairies thegarden is one word

While Dad and us boys are filling the bins
Mom and the girls are mustarding beans and pickling beets
filling Mason jars with a winter of good eats
then sealing them tight with red rubber rings

We are singing, it remembers like a song
A Canning time - Canning time - sing along

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The Girl From Away

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Love, Teenager / September 21, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
I was sixteen, it was summer

Hauling wheat to town in the 3-ton Chevy
A quart of store-bought buttermilk
on the seat for the trip back to the ranch

There was a girl, my age and beautiful
visiting in the last house on the left

Sometimes she would be 
on the street or in the yard

The truck was new and powerful
I was farm boy healthy, strong

We were hitting on all cylinders

It was warm, the window was open
I was in love, the buttermilk was cold
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Texas in the Title

Audio Recordings / tagged Music, Texas / September 20, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
If you want your song to be a hit
just put Texas in the title

Whether it's in your rear view mirror
or where all George Strait’s exes live

Austin Lounge Lizards trashing Dallas
or waltzing across it like Ernest Tubb

And the stars at night are big and bright
CLAP/CLAP/CLAP/CLAP/ /CLAP/CLAP/CLAP
Deep in the heart of Texas

Three thousand titles and more 
with the songs and movies and books

So you know just what to do
to have the eyes of Texas on you too

And what was them is gonna be us
so pull over Willie we’re gettin on the bus
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Time in Texas

Audio Recordings, Travel / September 19, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
You race it in Dallas
drown it in Houston
and dance with it in Austin

Any farther south
and you have to wrap it 
around a siesta
A burrito with salsa 
at both ends
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Poetry Texas

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Travel / September 18, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
There's a town in Texas called Poetry

Look for the water tower
about twenty miles S.E. of Dallas

Make up, if you like, what's in the water
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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
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Mosaics

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Connections, Design, Greece / September 16, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
On Delos a floor caught our eye
with an Escher-like mosaic pattern

Optical illusions of rectangles in rows
still bright after thirty centuries

Next day in a New York airport
we take our seats in the lounge
fabric covering the chairs 
in exact same pattern

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Owls to Athens

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Greece / September 15, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
One does not take coal to Newcastle
or owls to Athens

But it is good to go
with an appreciation of coal and owls

It is also permitted to leave Newcastle 
with a bit of coal in one's pocket

Or Athens with a small bronze of an owl

And memories of a questioning call
floating across the Agora
to the small cliff restaurant 

Where we rest on the long climb down
from all the heights of the Acropolis
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In Greece

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth, Travel / tagged Atlas, Echo, Illiad, mythology, Narcissus, Odysseus, Odyssey, Sisyphus, Tantalus / September 14, 2023 / 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
and 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
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