My friends are dead Zen and Tang Dynasty poets.
When I read them daily, it is like I am hanging
out with them,
and I think to myself who needs any more friends
than these great poets?
Their words, their philosophies, their wisdom,
provide me with all the socialization I need,
far better and more fulfilling than spending my days
listening to the idle chatter of many my age
still in the peopled world.
Bob Boyd
get my attention with this poem of yours:
Beneath the skin of
The one we fondle today,
There is a skeleton,
Propping up the flesh.
Ikkyu
Why couldn’t you have just written something
less graphic, less disturbing?
You could have written something less drastic, like
the woman you are fondling today will be dead someday.
That, though still disturbing, would have been more palatable,
gone down easier.
Now if I ever fondle a woman again, your buzzkill poem
will at some point pop into my mind
and wreck the illusion that I’ll be holding her forever.
Besides, you were supposed to be a freakin’ monk,
not some playboy writing about fondling women.
Ikkyu, if you hadn’t been a monk, I’d say damn you,
but I can’t afford any more bad karma in this life.
So in regard to your disturbing poem I’ll just say,
Ikkyu, why did you have to?
Bob Boyd
In his misspent, wasted youth
Sitting, profiling, in a pool hall,
Hard eyes, looking tough to fit in.
Often skipped days of school,
Had no time for education
In a small city in Massachusetts.
Inhaling a Lucky Strike cigarette,
Exhaling smoky circles in the air
Unfiltered, only manly way to go,
Greaser haircut, thought he was cool,
Thought he was super tough.
Cue ball breaking a rack to pieces,
Clatter of numbered balls
Speeding all over the pool table
Bouncing off the banks
Thudding sounds erupting
Some high and low balls
Dropping into the table pockets.
Cigarettes thrown in spittoons.
Hissing sounds when hitting the water.
Guys swearing over missed shots,
Losing serious betting money,
Some gangsters in the making.
Like Lucky Hall, 6’6” lean machine
Gangster mean and crazy as hell,
Always dressed in black.
Strolled over to him and
As he was taking a drag
On his unfiltered cigarette,
Lucky stuck a gun in his face.
He sat casually in a chair,
Pool stick in hand, unfazed,
Guns rarely seen back then.
He smiled and reached for the gun,
And said to Lucky, “Is that real?”
Not out of bravely was he unafraid,
Couldn’t believe the gun was real.
His nonchalance didn’t get the result
Lucky was looking for.
Lucky turned away, his black trench coat
Swirling in the smoky air,
Lucky looking gangster cool,
Dangerous, and genuine.
Two years later Lucky’s luck ran out.
Shot to death in faraway Alabama.
Probably put his gun in the wrong guy’s face.
Bob Boyd
Maybe I’ve been watching too much news,
but I’m getting weary of the human race.
Wars. Riots. Bad Governments. Murders.
Rapes. Serial Killers. Psychopaths.
Pedophiles. Evil people. Heartless people.
Jerks. Backstabbers. Arrogant people. Et cetera.
And I hope. And I pray. There is a better human race
in the afterlife. But, if dead is just dead and
there is no afterlife, that would, at least, permanently
remove my weariness with the human race.
Bob Boyd
She is beautiful and dangerous.
She’ll reel you in with her beauty,
her charms, and her lies.
She’ll tell you things like she needs
to escape from her current boyfriend
because she fears he will harm her.
And if you’re dumb like I was, you’ll
see this as an incentive to be with her
and save her from the evil boyfriend.
After you’re with her for a while, she’ll
tell some other guy the same thing
about you and will probably steal from you.
And I seriously believe she’d be
capable of killing you or having you
killed if you have something like
a house, considerable money, or
a substantial insurance policy
she would financially benefit from.
Bob Boyd
When a flea dies is it
just lights out,
or, absurd as it may seem,
is there a flea afterlife?
Sure it’s easy to think a
flea is just an insignificant
blood sucking pest
devoid of another
existence, but nobody
knows for sure
if a flea, or even if we,
have an afterlife.
When I die, I hope to
know the answers
to even seemingly trivial
questions like this.
That is if there is truly
an afterlife for me.
Bob Boyd
After spiritual energy awakened in me from the base of my spine to the crown of my head, I could feel the spiritual energy emanating out of highly evolved or enlightened beings in their photos, their videos, their written and spoken words.
This wasn’t a psychic power. I couldn’t do anything with it except perceive the energy like a receiver.
Once I was reading a book by a powerful spiritual master who was a Sanskrit scholar and an MD and whose path primarily consisted of a practice called Nada Yoga where you would meditate on the sounds in your head seeking enlightenment via the sound currents.
I was feeling his potent energy emanating out of the book, and all of a sudden a ringing in my ears accompanied the flow of energy, like an unexpected initiation into the spiritual master’s path.
I found the ringing disturbing, and it was unrelenting. I contacted the spiritual master for help with it.
He told me to come see him in upstate New York. I arrived at his ashram a day later and felt the pervasive abundance of spiritual energy that flowed from his powerful presence.
This spiritual energy was so powerful and pervasive that practically anyone would feel it, as is the case with enlightened spiritual masters or highly evolved adepts. They are like powerhouses of radiant, spiritual energy.
The spiritual master initiated me with a fire ceremony. I was amazed at how high staring at the fire made me. I’d read of yogis meditating on candles, but I never thought staring at fire could have such a potent effect.
After the fire ceremony, the spiritual master pulled a small stick out of his robe and tapped me on the head with it. And WOW! my consciousness was amped up a hundred fold and I was spiritually higher than ever in my life.
The supercharged state was the result of a shaktipat where a guru by the touch of his hand transmits some of his energy reservoir into your consciousness like a small tuning fork being supercharged by a bigger tuning fork’s more powerful vibration.
I remained in the elevated state of consciousness on my drive home and throughout the night. It lasted for about eight hours.
The next day the ringing was gone.
Bob Boyd
Old time radio show horror upon horrors.
The Hermit, macabre narrator, evil funny laughter
made the episodes more fun, decently written,
great scary music and awesome sound effects.
Actors never failed to deliver great horrors
with chilling horror shows, 1930s to 1940s.
Sad it ended then, good enough for a longer run.
Hats off to the great entertainment the
quirky narrator, the actors, and the writers provided.
Bob Boyd
Events and notable times whizz by.
In retrospect, ten years like ten minutes.
looking back at things like a popular pop song,
I can’t believe it was popular over ten years ago.
The worst part of the days racing by is
that they’re full throttle speeding to the finish line
that most people dread to face: expiration date.
Bob Boyd
How I love fun and funny people.
The world needs more of them.
They can brighten up dark days,
their humor can be quite healing.
Alas, I never met enough of them
in my eighty and one years,
but at least I knew enough of them
to make my long life lighter and
give me much laughter and fun.
Hail to fun and funny people!
Bob Boyd
I have read of scientific theories
that no God was involved in
the creation of the cosmos,
and that there is no God.
The scientists make excellent arguments,
but I do not find their arguments
airtight.
On the other hand, I don’t believe
the various religious views are airtight
about a God either, the differing
views of what that God is; for example
Jesus being or not being God.
But, I do believe, essentially, the
religious views are right about one thing:
That there is a God, and that God
was at the center of creation.
I believe in a way indiscernible
by Science, no matter their theories
denying the existence of God.
Bob Boyd
A devious woman allegedly blackmailed
thousands of monks
in Thailand with sexual videos of them
in July of 2025.
Six senior monks were defrocked and
two went missing.
When I was far younger, I used to think
the religious would have Divine protections.
But based on “falls from grace” across
the world, apparently it’s just not so.
And it seems even the enlightened have
to be circumspect in their behavior.
This leads me to think that despite how
devout people are, or try to be,
when it comes to their behavior no
Divine protections exist.
In brief, that the religious are on their own,
unshielded by the Divine.
Bob Boyd
Saw a video about vanished downtown in a small town
called Cooleemee in North Carolina.
Yesteryear it was a mill town with over a thousand
workers until the mill closed and people left the town.
After which, the downtown folded. Now just a grassy field,
but, at least, the town didn’t become a ghost town.
Hopefully in the future there will be a
resurgence of Cooleemee with a revitalized new downtown.
Bob Boyd
I’ve come to believe in ghosts
after hearing of many accounts
that seemed creditable to me.
But, if they are real, why just
hang around the earth plane?
And if they are real and hang
around, say, in an old house,
how do they pass their time?
Do they spend most of their
time in a suspended state,
awakening when someone
enters their domains?
Or do they kind of bilocate
living in a haunt and in other
parts of the afterlife at the
same time?
And as for evil ones, why
aren’t they in some place
where they’d be punished
or rehabilitated at the least?
And, hey, if you’re a ghost reading this
kindly let me know how you
pass your time.
Bob Boyd
Why can’t we remember where we were before
we were born?
And why can’t we know where we will go when
we die?
Why does there have to be a barrier between life
and death?
Of course there are speculations and those who
think they know.
But I don’t believe anyone really knows other than
what they’ve been told or read in books.
And maybe the answer is nowhere, or just from
sperm and eggs and ending in the grave.
Sometimes I’ve thought that I should be able
to see the afterlife in a deep contemplation,
a connection and a glimpse of it. But then
I realize my attempts will only be futile,
and that my brain is not wired for it. So I’ll just
have to wait until I die to see what is
beyond the barrier – if anything.
Bob Boyd
even though I’m a member of it.
The wars, the violence, the murders, the rapes,
the mean people, the jerks, and all the endless turmoil.
I’m hoping the afterlife is free of all the disappointing
behaviors and actions of my species,
but if it isn’t, and dead is just dead, there’ll be no me
to be disappointed with it. And, for me, that would
be good as well. No more of the disappointing noise
and clamor of the human race.
Bob Boyd
I cannot believe it. Mid-November and
a high of 86 degrees. What the hell,
literally. Has hell opened a bit where
I live? Where’s the long-awaited
cold weather? Will we get 86 highs
in the month of December? I was
looking forward to a cooling off of
the summer, but all I get is a heating
up of the fall.
Bob Boyd
He said aliens came through the walls of his bedroom
and carried him back through them to their UFO
somewhere in the high skies and presumably
cloaked to the human world.
He thinks they extracted his semen and maybe
some of his DNA.
He showed me what looked like an implant in
the shin of his right leg.
Maybe he’s legit, but I find it hard to believe
that aliens come through walls and extract semen,
as well as implanting implants in people’s bodies.
Bob Boyd
Every night he lingers there,
the stairway she fell and died on,
hoping to see or hear from her.
He feels her spirit returns to the
stairway at night when all is dark.
He holds a candle in his hand,
and he believes the candle will
summon her there from the dead.
But night after night no signs from
her, and he wonders if his broken
heart and his life will ever mend.
Bob Boyd
He hears her words clearly in his head.
I don’t know if he’s hallucinating or if
he imagines he hears her talking.
He seems like his mental faculties
are intact and that he’s perfectly sane.
So I concluded: whether he really hears
his wife or imagines it, no harm done.
And if it helps him with his grieving,
maybe it’s the perfect therapy for him.
Or maybe his wife really talks to him.
Bob Boyd
He said he was tired of women, sick of their shit.
So he bought a life-sized doll as a substitute.
He called her Maryann, loved her as if real.
He took her with him everywhere, even to
department stores and fast food restaurants.
He got stares and laughs from many people.
He didn’t care and, as said, love is blind.
A year passed, and he broke up with his doll,
tired of her giving him the silent treatment.
Bob Boyd
sits in his mountain cave
reading religious texts
meditating on mantras
unattached to the world
above the chaos below
transcending the self
merging with the cosmos
attaining the Oneness
Bob Boyd
Christmas mornings
with Christmas gifts.
Birthdays with
birthday gifts and
surprises.
Cartoons on TV.
A shiny new bicycle.
A pet, dog, cat, gerbil,
hamster, etc.
Fun children’s TV shows
and movies.
No soul-draining responsibilities.
No bills to pay.
No rent or house payments.
If lucky. If born into the right
family,
Childhood innocence and
a relatively blissful life.
Bob Boyd
