Audio Recordings – Page 201 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Audio Recordings

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

Mom, Happy Birthday

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Love, Mother / October 3, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Oh we would circle
rattling tin-wheeled trucks and trikes
and drive her crying to her bed

Gather soot enough from here and there
to keep her forever scrubbing
at our souls and skins

And worry her near to death
while she stayed up to worry us alive
from many a snow and beer-filled drive

I know she does it to this day
and I’m afraid anything else I’d say
would all be mush and love
and angels watching from above
and yet still, I think I will

Thinking of my Mom today, on what would have been her 102nd birthday.

Next

Audio Recordings / tagged Gold Star Mother / September 29, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Cindy Sheehan has spent
enough time in a tent
It is time to let her rest
Other mothers can be found
Last month a hundred or more
made it through the qualifying round

The Crow

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Death, Guns, Hunting / September 28, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

TWO BOYS AND CROW AT FIFTY YARDS
TWO SHOTS AS ONE THE CROW FELL STILL
WE LAUGHED AND RAN
WHOSE HIT WHOSE MISS
TWO HOLES IN HEAD
AS CLOSE AS THIS
O O
THE LIFE WAS IN OUR EYES AND SKILL
TOO FAR FROM DEATH TO UNDERSTAND A KILL

Gopher Tails

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / September 27, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When I was seven
gopher tails were three cents

The county had a bounty
to arrest the little pest
not exactly a price on their heads
but you get the picture

So we hauled buckets of water
to drown them out
Learned from the bigger boys
how to tie a noose in binder twine
Placed it around the hole
and waited

Curiosity
which has been known to kill cats
is not very good for gophers either

Once caught
they were run in mad races
spun to centrifugal asphyxiation
or finished off in other cruel ways
before yielding us our hard-earned bounty

In the spring we watched their return
to the snow-speckled pasture
running tumbling wrestling
making love

And the wonderful babies
when they first ventured out
to try sunshine, grass and shaky legs

It amazes me now
that as boys we could take
such joy in their playful beauty

and in their deaths

2 Replies

Shaman’s Stick

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth / tagged Healing, Spirituality / September 22, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When dead Shamans 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
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
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

Sacred Dance

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth, Uncategorized / tagged Africa, Healing / September 21, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The Bushmen of the Kalahari
dance all night in a circle
dance a calf-deep trench in the sand

In a circle around the circle
sit those in need of a healing

And because it is a sacred dance
any dancer at any time may step
out of the dance and do the healing
and then return to the dance again

Knowing without knowing
that everyone is a healer sometimes
everyone needs a healing sometimes

You just keep dancing

Image by kolibri5 from Pixabay

When the Storms Came

Audio Recordings, Relationships / September 12, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When the storms came
and I started them I hid

When the storms came
and you started them I ran

When the storms came
and the world started them
I ran to you and hid

Kenny and Me

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Beer, Harvest, Youth / September 10, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Ranching at Eighteen
Together we were young
and strong and very bold
and together we could drink
more beer than we could hold

We could drive home late and fast
singing every Johnny Horton song
Then fall asleep for minutes
and still answer the morning gong

We would work it out in the hot hot sun
(so easy then did the poisons yield)
As we sweated bales with pitch forks
and passed gas
in a thousand acre field

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Anonymous on Rule BritannicaNovember 6, 2026
Amen to that.
Sandi Hebley on Ready for WinterOctober 26, 2026
😁😁
NEIL MEILI on Laughing With the DeadOctober 25, 2026
Thanks for the story Sandi, And bet he is and that I would have liked him Neil
Sandi Hebley on Okay Now – MostlyOctober 22, 2026
🤗
Sandi Hebley on Laughing With the DeadOctober 21, 2026
One of my fondest memories is that the last full sentence my dad spoke was to tell a visitor a…

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