Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Neil Meili

Category: Audio Recordings

Painting the Prairie

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Art / June 8, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
No abstract art
in the Old Farmers Home

Survival needs order
Home Sweet Home
painfully into a sampler stitched

Only the storms
got to color outside of the lines
someone had to rope the house to the barn
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Dusk

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Humor, UFOs / June 6, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
One light comes on in the sky
one lamp on the prairie - James Wright

Lined up at the north end of the south field 
hard machines made for tearing the earth
relax into softness

The newlyweds in the hired man's house
are getting a little shy again

While
just over the horizon which is becoming not one 
teenagers from Mars in their little round cars
ponder a perfect night to spin a crop circle or two
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Crop Insurance

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Hope, Humor / June 5, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
Young farmer at the country dance
feeling there was nothing left to live for
with his whole crop flat-threshed by hail

Until the prettiest girl in the hall
took him outside to show it wasn't necessarily so

Next morning's pews were filled to full
with farmers praying for their crops to fail
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Hawaii Five Oh Oh

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry / tagged Hawaii, Horses, Humiliation, Pride, Shame / June 4, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
So beautiful 
It could be an ad for anything

A young man and a beautiful young woman 
gallop along a deserted white-sand Oahu beach

They wouldn’t include in the thirty second ad
how hard the cowboy from Canada is trying to impress the island maid

How many acres - how many broncs broken

She had given him her 16 hand Hunter to ride
and they’d left the silly English saddles behind

How good he feels about himself as the sand kicks up from hooves
how pride goeth before a rogue wave crashing at their feet 
and the horse spooking
and the cowboy’s doing everything right for a quarter horse 
and wrong for this one who goes left while he goes right

Nothing but gravity between him and his butt on the hard wet sand
The visible bruise lasts a week or two
Lifetime of therapists working on the shame
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Dragons

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth, Travel / June 3, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
Beyond the maps of the ancient world
There be dragons
Beyond the ways of parents and peers
There be dragons
Beyond the days of preachers and of teachers
There be dragons
Beyond where you know or have dared to go
There be dragons
A toe tip, a step, and a stride
Heart, arm and sword
steeled by the fiery breath
How sweet the dragon's meat
and the maiden's
Another mark on another map
Here be dead dragons
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Help Wanted – Dragon

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Dating, Test / June 2, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
Four hour gig at city park
Saturday the twenty seventh

Maiden meeting .com match
for first time wishing to confirm
he's every bit as brave as his bio
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Chivalry Was Not Dead But Damp

Audio Recordings, Relationships, Travel / tagged Disillusionment, Quests / June 1, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
It was a dark and stormy knight
that led his lame horse
through winter wet and counted out his woes

An unending drip
ran down his rusty helmet
and burned and blurred his visored eyes

He was as cross 
as the frayed cross on his tunic
and swearing oaths at all the oaths he'd sworn

Damsels, damn all damsels
their gratitude had seldom lasted
beyond the ride back to the castle

Today he felt more kinship with the dragon
and would have fain laid down his sword
at the mouth of any breath-warmed cave
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Cloud Castles

Audio Recordings / tagged imagination / May 31, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
Every longing princess
can have a white knight on a charger
and every lonely child a puppy
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Trains I Haven’t Been On

Audio Recordings / tagged Travel / May 30, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
The Orient Express
except for Agatha Christie

The night train to Mount Rushmore 
except for Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint

The way home at Thanksgiving 
on the Wichita to Jefferson City leg
except for John Candy and Steve Martin
in the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles

All the ones with sleeper cars a rockin'
on all those trips we promised we would take
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Service

Audio Recordings / tagged Care, Community, Death, Funeral / May 29, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
Every small town funeral
church ladies serving tea
and sandwiches and cake

Love 
through shaking hands
spreads in quivering waves
out across the jellied salad
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  1. Anonymous on CirclesJanuary 18, 2026

    Both Gloria and I were touched by your poem. Congrats. Tom and Gloria

  2. 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…

  3. barbara joy on MessagesJanuary 16, 2026

    profound

  4. 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…

  5. 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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