Audio Recordings – Page 68 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Audio Recordings

You are the U in Houston to Me

Audio Recordings, Environment, Relationships, Travel / tagged Pollution, Smog, Texas / February 5, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

How could I ever leave you love
if you didn’t live in Houston

If it wasn’t for the humid swamp
and the trash along the bayou
how could I say good-bye to you

You know I love you dearly
and it ain’t you that makes me run
but Houston traffic’s far from fun
and every Bubba’s got a gun

Yet even with all of that
and the country’s worst damn air
you know that I’ll keep coming back
as long as you are there

And I’ll keep leaving Houston too
after a muggy smoggy day or two

One of these days I hope you know
I’ll take you with me when I go

Freeways – Houston

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Commute, Congestion, Greed, Smog, Traffic, Work / February 4, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Every day - high tide and low
the same metal corks float in and out
Unable to escape the pull of silver
and the carbon covered moon

Dennicia

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Art & Artists / February 3, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Judging a city by its traffic
Houston is caffeine and constipation

Two days we swear
we're on a walking tour by car
so at last we decide to take a cab across town

She pulls up wearing a smile
that would get us there if headlights failed
and a name that you could call a continent

Joseph Conrad in his Heart of Darkness
might have written a different book
if he'd been in that cab and not on that boat

Sacrifice

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Addiction, Alcohol, Art & Artists, Drugs / February 2, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The Kuala Khans from minds
broken loose by
and all too soon broken by drugs

The alcohol that so many have found
as the key to their heaven and their hell

And all the wounds of daily battles
with truths wrestled to a fall

Makes me wonder if writers
like mothers and forests
sometimes lay down their bodies
that their children may grow

Another One for Eric

Audio Recordings / tagged Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Death / February 1, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

They say alcohol is a depressant
things go slower and slower

Like when you put the gun to your head

Pulled the trigger
and took ten years to fall down

The Death of a Thousand Cups

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Death / January 31, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Some die by inches, some by ounces

Little by little he sank below the surface
each meeting less and less of him there
- a discussion without a quorum

It's been a few months now
and he hasn't appeared in dreams
or haunting our old haunts

It was so long
since he knew he was alive
he may not yet know that he is dead

North of the Medicine Line

Audio Recordings / tagged Addiction, Alcohol, Colonialism, History, Pioneers, Settlers / January 30, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Given the theory
with some evidence
that the natives of this land
had about the same tolerance
for alcohol as they had for smallpox
and because someone “knew better”
they were not allowed to buy it

If your hubby showed a weakness for drink
and a strong tendency to spend
the grocery money on the demon rum

You’d just go to the proper authorities
have him added to the Indian list
and barred from every bar

The Medicine Line refers to the 49th parallel and Fort Whoop-Up (pictured above) was a notorious trading post in the late 1800s.

Deer Gone

Audio Recordings, Ranch Life / tagged Alcohol, Death, Disconnection, Extinction, First Nations, Gratitude, Guns, Hunting, Ignorance / January 29, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

A tough shot, 600 yards at least, running
left to right in the open sights of the 303
Aim to the top of the third jump ahead, move
the gun in a smooth arc and squeeze slow

It was a kill
I saw it as great skill
a source of blood-fed pride
and the deer… well it just died

The first nations used to see it as a kind of
revolving door, the spirit of the animal would
come back soon enough in another body if you used
the one he had given up to you with gratitude

There are not many deer in these parts anymore
Wonder if they’re trapped waiting for gratitude
the natives lost in Fort Whoop-Up whiskey

and we never knew

Pickled

Audio Recordings / tagged Alcohol, Hunting, No Return / January 27, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Those who talk about
when alcohol becomes an ism
sometimes use the example
of a cucumber immersed in brine

Of how it is a cucumber until it becomes a pickle
and can never go back to being a cucumber again

Could be the same with hunting things

How many geese do you have to shoot
before what was a Vee of beauty passing overhead
turns to calculating the range of a 12 gauge to bring them down

Moisture is Moisture

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Rain, Snow, Wisdom / January 26, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Moisture is moisture
is the mantra of the dryland farmer

It doesn't matter if it's snow or rain
or if a foot of one
equals about an inch of the other

He is happy enough to sit
by the window and watch it fall

And any kid that complains
they can't go outside and play
will be quick-slapped by the adage

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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…

Audio Recordings
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Cowboy Poetry
Cows
Environment
Family
Farm
Flight
Haiku
Limerick
Manure
Nature
News
Nostalgia
Personal Growth
Pilots
Poems about Poetry
Ranch Life
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Remembering
String Too Short To Save
Travel
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