Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Washday Monday

Audio Recordings, News / tagged Consequences, Death, Grief, Patriotism, War / October 21, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When the war is over
who will wash
the blood from the flags

How big the pot
how much water hot
how many widows stirring

For the Music

Audio Recordings / tagged Connection, Fear, Music, War / October 20, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Everyone learns
the drum in the womb
so every tribe has music first
and all the first words rhyme
and guttural-down in time
as we learn of hate and crime

When making a bomb shelter list
always include an instrument in it

Haifa

Audio Recordings / tagged Art, Attack, Carpe Diem, Fear, Iran, Israel, Protection, War / October 19, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In the house of a friend of friends
there were Chagalls
lifting the walls they hung on
and under the stairs a bomb shelter door

Being in the moment
is not learned but lived
when each next moment might be your last

How Is It That I Laugh

Audio Recordings, News, Relationships / tagged Celebration, Death, Friendship, Grief, Israel, Jerusalem, Memory, Palestine, War / October 18, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

How is it that I laugh easier now
eve though so many
that I laughed with laugh no more
and at their memory can only smile

In Isreal on the Mount of Olives
we were included in a wedding party
where Muslims drank orange soda
men danced with men and laughed

So much of the world is far from fun
but that was yesterday and tomorrow
In the hotel of seven arches only joy

Hotel 7 Arches sits atop the Mount of Olives in East Jerusalem

What’s In the News and What Isn’t

Audio Recordings, News, Poems about Poetry / tagged Assisted Dying, Death, Sin, Suicide, War / October 17, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

People are taking
each other's lives and their own

The threat of hell
for either no longer seems to deter
nor empty plots in consecrated ground

Friends of ours are being shot at
another has taken the gas pipe exit

It is early on a Friday morning
I don't know how to end this poem

Dark Skies

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Contemplation, Milky Way, Stars / October 16, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

He
turns off the TV
and goes outside to count
bullet holes in the sky

Rising moon is a lime in a Corona

New-cut hay is youth
and him lying on his back
traveling the milk-paved path

He lays back on the hay

Feels of the Farm – Flax

Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Grain, Senses, sensuality / October 15, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You can't walk on flax in a bin
quick as quicksand it pulls you in

But run your hand through it
back and forth on edge or cupped

Smooth as purple flower petals
and as cool as spring all summer

Too young to yet compare
it to the inside of a woman's thigh

1 Reply

Royalty

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Prairie, Rich Life, Wealth / October 14, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Wheat of gold
covered the hills

There were purple robes of flax
and castles
aplenty in the clouds

The kind and queen kept our lineage from us
but we only had
to look around to know

How the Tractor Engine

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Harvest, Wheat / October 13, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

How the tractor engine sings
in a different key when the sun goes down

Like the stooking gets a little easier
when you've had a few pulls on the water bag

Things you wouldn't notice driving by
fast enough to see us still-life in the field

Threshing Time

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Harvest, Wheat / October 12, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I remember at Christmas getting a great threshing machine
a block of wood with wooden spools nailed to the side
but I loved it as I loved the threshing

All through the long summer days I would walk
the fields with my dog
At night my mother rubbed strong liniment on four year old
legs: growing pains she said, although one always hurt
more and didn’t seem to grow any faster

And the grain grew too, and passed me, and was higher
than I was. And then the harvest and the wonder of it falling
to the binder and the magic of the machine as it tied the
sheaves and ke-chunked them into the carrier

Then the stooking – little teepees covering the prairie again
and the golden warmth of everything

And the threshing machine; they wouldn’t let me too close;
it might eat me like it ate those sheaves and like the men
in the crew could eat, and they could eat
even when it rained

While I sat for hours nose to wet window
watching the great gray dinosaur
deep in the timeless mists

And hot clear windless days when everything sang and
the big belt slapped and the machine came to life again
and wagons were on both sides
and the big horses were standing strong and ready
and switching flies with dignity

The sun caught the arch or the long plume of straw and
the chaff lifting and the old hands fed the machine in a
sort of easy sweat-oiled rhyme and the new hands stood
on the sheaves they tried to lift each time

And the old hands laughed, and the new hands laughed
and they were men together

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Tom on Basketball in CanadaApril 18, 2025
Neil, as you may know we live about 15 miles from his former farm. The locals have installed a bronze…
Ken Christopher on Hockey Night in CanadaApril 17, 2025
Good one, it’s still goin on
Ken Christopher on ShitstormApril 4, 2025
My former comment had an error, should have read: Great poem Neil, has some slippery elements that mix it up…
Kenneth on Walden PondApril 3, 2025
Siblants interlapping with interference waves construct this delightful hologram of spring: well done my friend
Ken Christopher on Minutia in MarchApril 1, 2025
21 beats, 4 past hyku, (sp); perhaps a new form. Beautiful poem

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