Audio Recordings – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Audio Recordings

A Prairie Villanelle

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Travel / February 9, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If prairie wheels again had I
I’d chew the gravel and the air
with prairie roads to fly

I’d plume the earth into sky
to show them I was there
if prairie wheels again had I

Past places where dead neighbours lie
I’d not linger, who would dare
with prairie roads to fly

Dust to dust gets in your eye
I’d look for other things to share
if prairie wheels again had I

Then greener farmyards I’d pass by
in mem-mirages free of care
with prairie roads to fly

I’d roll past all that makes you cry
afloat in sunsets clear and fair
if prairie wheels again had I
with prairie roads to fly

The Man in the Desert

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth / January 27, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

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 its 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

Photo by Robert Murray on Unsplash

2 Replies

Magdalene

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Jesus, Love / December 1, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

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 sin in him

Buffalo Chips

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Manure, Ranch Life / November 6, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Lily pads floating
on the sea of prairie grass

Heat for the tepees
or the homesteaders cabin

Nothing wasted in the West

And every boy knew
that a good sharp stick or a pointy-toed shoe
would let you know
if one was just right, or still a little too new

And I’m here to tell you, that compared to a
good dry chip
meeting a West wind’s invitation
a Frisbee is a weak and poor, plastic imitation

The Canon of Fodder

Audio Recordings / tagged Sacrifice, War / October 26, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

and aint every fodder of every cannon dying for someone else's sins
sweet Jesus at their model

Poet All Stars

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Art, Baseball / October 22, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The odds are overwhelming

Every time we play the game
we find ourselves on a level field
with the all time all world all star team

Homer, Whitman, Rumi and Omar Khayyam
Wordsworth, Shakespeare (or whoever wrote his stuff)

It’s like always batting against Nolan Ryan on his best day
Like trying to strike out Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams
Babe Ruth (without a hangover) and Reggie Jackson in October

Great poets never tire or retire, they just die
and still play with their best stuff

Soccer players today don’t have to play Pelé every day
But with translations and free agents
we write up against Neruda, Viello and Paz

Or heads up against Leo Tolstoy and Anna Ackmanova
with an East German judge

But we play

First day of the World Series today!

The Sheep of Holland

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Disease / October 20, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sheep soft on the soft wet grass
between our house and the old windmill

Sheep running in the distance
a long row of cotton candy
pulled by an invisible string

March lambs gambolling
on the sides and tops of dikes

The black cloud of hoof and mouth
gathering over England
strikes as we leave

Watching the news in Atlanta
my farmer fear pulls me back

Memory revises

I stand in the bare fields
look at the bare dikes

Taste the burning wool

2 Replies

Baling Love

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Manure, Ranch Life / October 13, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When it’s over 90 in July alfalfa gets dry
and blows into the knotter
and the knots won’t stay tied
So you ride on the bouncing back
where each ke-chunk of the plunger
blows chaff in your eye as you search for
loose ends of twine that you finally find
and tie into a new knot, with love, or not

Then you pile them in piles of five
to keep the wet weather at bay
and you pile them any which way
or you pile them with love and pride
pile them right like Frank Lloyd Wright

Hurried by a wind blowing in from Alaska
You handle that same bale again in the fall
tossing it up on the wagon, kneeing it with
bloody knees through thistle-torn jeans, or
an overhand flip with a three-tined fork and
the grace and precision of a pole vault champ

Fourth time you see that bale
you unload that wagon and make a stack
while chaff turns your collar to sandpaper
And you can do it so when you stand back
you can see every bale fits without a crack

Fifth time you see that bale
it’s winter and maybe forty below
prying frozen cubes out of that stack
where the cattle are waiting, with steam
rising from hot breath and fresh manure
and you carefully cut each Ariadne thread
so not even Theseus could follow it back
through their labyrinth of seven stomachs

Next time you see it is in late spring
when four feet of crap in the calf shed has
melted to the bottom and you’re in and out
with the front end loader and the ammonia
clearing a whole winter from your sinuses

And then off to the fields to spread it out and
complete the circle, trying to stay up wind
and as old Bob used to say, “keeping your
mouth open to keep your face clean”

All that to feed your family, and the world
all that with love, or not

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

2 Replies

Ode to the Farmer

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Ranch Life / October 12, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

No one will be surprised by the report
that farming is a very dangerous sport

What flapping empty-fingered gloves
point back to momentary lapses
What limbs with what power
have been taken off
by power take-offs

What tendons snapped like glass
and bones cut clean as grass
by unthinking mowers

And what of those neighbours
dead and true
who for a minute forgetting
what they knew
through red machines
combined with their grain
All these have earned his dusty tear
and many a “who’s next” fear

Year after year after year after year

And yet deep in the soils of time
the seeds of his goodness
are growing
while the world
turns in slow seasons

And he will be ready
when at last they declare
a true war on poverty
and are willing to bomb
with wheat

Supper with the PhD

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Addiction, Alcohol / October 4, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I sit across from my friend
and watch as he drowns
his well developed brain

Every day after work
he puts another million
brain cell kittens in a sack
and takes them to the lake

It is not for me to judge

This small death each day
may well have kept him from
the larger choice his father made

And a diminished capacity may help
when listening to the daily news
or hanging out with poets

1 Reply

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