Poems about Poetry – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Poems about Poetry

Words in a Poem

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / December 5, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You wrote them down
and then they were there

Putting Ancestry.com
through an AI data blender
might guess where they came from
It doesn't matter

Some words are small c catholic
and may try to shuffle around a bit

Some words are
old time large C Catholic
and can never get a divorce

None of the words can get a divorce
A poem is a poem

Fall Again

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Autumn, Inspiration, Seasons, Winter / November 19, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Filled to full by drinking
from the fire hose of spring
flat-wound on the wall all winter

Full enough
to last the summer mostly
and thank the giving at Thanksgiving

But the writings on the wall – fall
year winding down hose winding up

five months of drinking from a cup

For Louise

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Art & Artists, Louise Glück / October 27, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Everything returns, but what returns is not what went away - Louise Glück

I never knew she was here until she left
It was in all the papers

There were pictures, I liked her from them
got a bunch of her books, not so sure now

She won a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize
I'll have to take the judges word for it

If she came back, I'd take her to tea
where we could talk of anything - but poetry

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/louise-gluck

Hyperbowling

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Exageration, Expression, Humor, Hyperbole / October 14, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

With thanks to Pat Love for the 🎳!!!!! emoji

Why He Didn’t Go To Mary Oliver’s Workshop

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth, Poems about Poetry / tagged Art & Artists, Fear / October 12, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Reasons he didn’t go
to the intimate week-long
with the world famous poet
on an island off New England

What he told himself …

It was expensive
(he had the money)

He had commitments
(easy enough to change)

Difficult to get to
(his travel skills were legend)

What he didn’t tell himself …

He might have to on his return
burn everything he’d ever written

A Mary Oliver Question

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / October 11, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You don't want to hear the story of my life, and anyway I don't want to tell it.
Mary Oliver - Dogfish

Mary Oliver writes poems that are not about her

In the poems there are
black bears and wild geese
and dogfish and starfish and sharks
and even a few clams

There are herons and owls
red-tailed hawks, black snakes
and fawns and does and dogs

The black bears and wild geese
the alligators and the sunflowers
and even the cracked walls say

"These poems are not about us either"
I have to ask - are they about you?

Druthers

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / October 10, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I prefer the absurdity of writing poems to the absurdity of not writing poems - Wislawa Szymborska

I prefer reading her poems
to her not having written them
and almost everyone else's too

As for my own
the lame, and the lovely
I prefer with her
and leave the vote to you

Thanksgiving Poem: How-to

Audio Recordings, Nature, Poems about Poetry / tagged Art & Artists, Autumn, Fall, Gratitude, Holiday, Thanksgiving / October 9, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Don’t write right away, but soon.
Watch the leaves and the light fully
Connect – allow – relax – delight.
Too quick is a tourist in a selfie,
Taj Mahal untended over left shoulder.
Wait too long and the phone will ring

Write a few hundred poems before – good and bad,
so fear of the water doesn’t keep you on shore
And how about a title throwing two shadows
(as Mary Oliver encourages)
an easy one here with movement and the season

Do not say leaves look toward the sun, an object,
but towards the rising of the sun, an event
one more evocative of motion

Note the angle of the sun,
so low on the horizon that is shines upwards
into the twisting, twirling, falling leaves,
as they lift at times in slightly gusting breeze

If pirouetting is what you see, bring the ballet in

And gratitude, of course, and on what day

A Farewell to Eric

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Relationships, Travel / tagged Aboriginal, Death, Elders, First Nations, Grief, Magic, Mysticism, Native, Shaman, South America / September 26, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In nineteen seventy five
In the rainforests of Venezuela
Eric lived for a year with the Yanomami

He also lived with the Hunkpapa
the little people that only the shamans see
unless you toke what the shamans toke
then you can see them too

When Eric was ready to go home
the Yanomami gathered by the river
and wailed and mourned as if he'd died

Eric says his goodbyes and tries to start his boat
Tuned up, new plugs and all, but it just won't start

He pulls and pulls while the tribesmen wail

After what seems like a very long time
the shame comes down to the boat
and asks Eric if he's sure he must leave

Eric insists again that the time has come

The shaman admits that he has placed Hunkpapas in the motor to keep him there

He pulls them out one by one
juggling them hot in his hands
and throws them steaming into the river
One pull and the engine starts

In two thousand and twelve in Austin
Eric is ready to go home again
Many wail and wish that he would stay
by he knows that it is time to leave

At times like this it helps
to have a shaman for a friend

John Hawk flies in and reads
Eric's poems to the Hunkpapas
and watches as the little people leave
It takes a few pulls, but the motor starts

Poetry Texas

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Travel / September 18, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

There's a town in Texas called Poetry

Look for the water tower
about twenty miles S.E. of Dallas

Make up, if you like, what's in the water

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