Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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The Little Dutch Boy Writes Poetry

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / March 2, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Only a drop or two
and only from time to time
but you can feel the weight
of the whole North Sea behind it

Image by luijk from Pixabay

Poetry at Bergen

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Travel / tagged Language / March 1, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If Austin is the Athens of America
Bergen is the Austin of Holland

Sunday afternoon
reading in seven languages

Feeling the difference

Harsh precision of the Dutch
If you could understand the
language
you would understand the poem

Russian
The power of
a shot of cold vodka
and survival on the steppes

Afrikaans
Dutch rubbed smooth
by the soft hills of Africa

Latin
Still the mother of language
singing through her children

Spanish
Music of Lorca
moving your body as you listen

French
Dark musings of Rimbaud
a shrug in every verb

English
The fish does not see water
but there was food everywhere

Edible Books

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Art & Artists, Nurture, Writing / February 29, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of all the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life - Giorgos Seferis

A hut may be a granary, a mansion a desert
Where are the books piled Dagwood deep
Where does your mother read you to sleep

Where do the mangoes of the South and the spices of the East mix in feast

How To Write Good

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Education / February 28, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

(for Maia, age eleven)

Granddaughter I might say
read some Ernest Hemingway

A good place to start might be
"The Old Man and the Sea"

Watch how he draws arrows
pointing to an empty space
until a picture appears

If we're going to know it
you're going to have to show it

And if you want to say you're sad
don't say you're sad - that's bad

Try something like -

She came home after the spat
didn't even say hello to the cat
Threw herself down
and cried her way through
two
pillows
and a mattress
until the drops began to fall
on the head
of her sister in the lower bed

2 Replies

To That End

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Art, Education, War / February 27, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The war to end all wars
maintains that illusion for 20 years

The poems to end all wars
live longer but prevent no casualties

The war to end all poems
and the poems to end all poems
are still raging in every public school

Good Guy Bad Guy

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry / tagged Corruption, Integrity, Perception, Reform, Villain, Virtue / February 26, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Cowboy rides in
with his white had on to clean up the town

Cleaning up a town can be dirty work
and his hat's getting blacker and blacker

Not long now
till they ride him out of town on a rail

Marilyn Forever

Audio Recordings / tagged Marilyn Monroe, Vulnerability / February 25, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Many men
may pray to Mary
but many more to Marilyn

With Marilyn
on calendar or windowsill
time stands still and always will

It is Marilyn
who always forgives
even when we forget to pray

It is Marilyn
who knows we are all Misfits
too fragile for the roles we are asked to play

1 Reply

Marilyn in the Mountains

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia, Travel / tagged Jasper, Marilyn Monroe / February 24, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sixty years after
the release of the film
returning again to
The River of No Return

Stepping again in a river
that you can't step in twice
sleeping again in a cabin
by the cabin where you slept

Listening again to the rapids
that run over the same rocks
and still chew at the roots
of the same bent tree

Listening for the whispers of the words
you went away without saying
the words we are all still waiting to hear

The Blonde

Audio Recordings / tagged Attraction, Intelligence, Stereotype / February 23, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

She was type and archetype

She was Suzanne Sommers
in a white T-bird in American Graffiti
Lee Meredith in The Producers
and Marilyn in anything - or nothing

She was in ten thousand jokes
five of which might have been funny

She was Gentlemen Prefer playing on a loop
in the elevator of the Platine Hotel in Paris
reminding us over and over "I can be smart when it's important but most men don't like it"

1 Reply

Paradiso

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth / tagged Faith, Heaven, Literature, Paradise, Religion, Searching / February 22, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Finally diving into Dante
skipping Inferno and Pergatorio
and straight through to Paradiso

Theory being that life will provide plenty
of coals to walk on with or without my help

Protestant at Catholic school
I've passed through the purgatory
of "No Questions" nuns teaching catechism

Heaven on the other hand
might still be a thing for earning
and worth the price of active search
with any maps and guides a blessing

There's Beatrice now, I'll follow her and let you know

1 Reply

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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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