Month: February 2024

Angel in Heaven

when I first saw you
astonished
speechless
I felt like I was
beholding a
bona fide
beautiful
angel
descended
from
heaven
years later when by chance
I saw you in an airport
we spoke and I learned
you were a mortal
but as beautiful as any angel
a military nurse you were
going to the war in Afghanistan
a student I was on the way to London
we promised to stay in touch
alas and tears a terrorist bomb
took you forever away from me
in that hot desert warzone
perhaps God needed another
angel in heaven
ah me
I dry
my eyes
thinking of
what might
have been

Bob Boyd

My Tormented Heart

At seventy one, sadly love seems
To have drained out of your life.
Maybe like me with age-reduced testosterone
You have age-reduced estrogen.
Maybe unlike me, older than you,
That reduction has dimmed your ardor.
But if only you could see
How the sparks of a new romance
Would set your passion ablaze,
Feeling young and in love again.
I’m standing here enamored
Offering all that and more to you.
But like many ladies your age,
For whatever reasons, you’ve
Given up on romance.
O my tormented heart.

Bob Boyd

Isn’t It Lonely Together

At first the marriage was fairy tale happy
Lovely you, fun, nice, pretty too
A good match for me, got along so well.
A new job at Hewlett Packard
New friends, soon more time away from me.
Coffee houses with girlfriends nearly every night;
Other nights visiting sisters.
At least you didn’t cheat on me, but
Me home lonely, increasingly unhappy,
Your socialization became an addiction,
My heart became increasingly lonely,
My mind began wishing I’d never married you.
A Country Western Song nailed it back then,
Isn’t It lonely Together was you and me,
Or at least me. You seemingly oblivious
And insensitively indifferent to the
heartaches you were causing me.
Every few months an argument
Your rarely home ways, my postnuptial woes.
You’d change for a few weeks then ….
Morph back into the social butterfly wife
And fly away again, home merely
Your launching pad.
The day I told you I was leaving,
Stunned, you couldn’t believe it;
You thought I’d put up with the loneliness
And unhappiness forever.
Pain outweighing pleasure time to leave,
Liberate myself from the pangs of constant desolation.
After I left, you drove all over the city looking for me
As if it wasn’t too late, but I knew if I went back with you,
I’d be lonely together again after a month or two
When you resumed your extroverted ways.

Bob Boyd

Timeless Love

her beauty erased
once a Miss America
plastic surgery
Botox and
a multitude of
age defying
lotions and
useless potions
against age
desecrations

when embracing her
her husband
closes his eyes
and pretends
she’s a beauty again
she closes her eyes
and pretends
he’s handsome again
together 40 years
they know
each other’s game
and still love
each other
their aged
wrinkled bodies
and lost looks
no deterrent to
lasting true love.

Bob Boyd

Monster Monsoon

The rain beats hard against my battered windows.
Its attacks have a dangerously foreboding sound,
Sprays of bullets intent on killing the window panes
And maybe me next if it succeeds in its quest.
Nice and safe inside, like being a kid again,
Covered in security blanket woven in warmth,
Hiding from the angry searching rain,
Cozy, warm and protected against,
The relentless monster monsoon,
That keeps beating on my trembling windows
As if it wants to get in and finish me.
Soaking me thoroughly like a fish in the sea,
Giving me a cold or maybe pneumonia.
Does the rain have a dark soul
That longs to kill me?
At last it has run out of breath
And simmered down,
Reduced to precipitation,
The beating sounds gone.
Its torrential might
Dissolved into drizzle
Before the sun shuts it down.

Bob Boyd

Ambivalence

Sometimes I think it would be nice
To have a girlfriend or a wife.

Then I think about how what is first supremely sweet
Can turn acidically sour.

I think about all the relationships and marriages
Shipwrecked on seas of disillusionment,

And wonder to myself, do I really want to take the chance,
The possibility of an abandoned love and a marooned heart.

Without doubt it can be advantageous when one becomes two,
But the tides are high and the seas can run dry.

Bob Boyd

The Fall

had a fall tonight

water on floor in Walgreens store

sprung up tough as steel

Bob Boyd

True story. There was water on the floor and I hit the floor so hard and so fast the store employers thought I’d need to have someone called or that I was something akin to mortality wounded, lol. Luckily I don’t had osteoporosis and better I fell on that slippery floor than a an elderly woman with osteoporosis; it could have been a broken hip and a hospitalization, possibly death 6 months later.

So in a way, despite the cuts on my finger and my elbow and the soreness, better me than that elderly woman.

Concerned for me, a 79-year-man, one of the employees asked me twice if I was all right. I said, “No problem. I’m tough as nails,” which is actually true, and thank God, I don’t have osteoporosis or slow reflexes. My hand and elbow took the brunt of the fall instead of worse case scenario my head and possibly death.

Addicted to 30s Music

At first, 30s music, old fashioned to me,
The bands playing for awhile before
The singer sang annoyed me.
Get to it, I thought. Don’t prolong
The best part, what I’m listening for,
The singer from the start like
Modern pop. Twenty songs
And many nights later, started
Liking the band playing first,
Appreciated the orchestration,
The magnificence of the harmony of
Instruments, the beauty of the melodies.
Now I like 30s music as much or more than
Music of my 60s and 70s generation.

Bob Boyd

Trains

Trains roaming days and nights
Rolling on tracks clickety clack,
Horns blowing, breaks steaming,
Sometimes a steel beast roaring,
On rails all across the country.
More sights to see them on a plane
With sky and clouds your only view.
I hear trains screeching on the tracks
And feel them shaking my apartment.
Rumblings trembling my chair,
Reverberating in my back
Like a mild earthquake quaking.
I wonder where the trains are bound,
And what it would be like to be on one
Traveling to an unknown locale
To start a new more exciting life
Somewhere I’ve never been.
Imagine taking a train to paradise.

Bob Boyd

New York New York

Big Apple city streets and subways less safe.
Fruit has gone sour, partake of it at your own risk.
Lunatics push you into 82,000 pounds of screeching death,
Flattens and chews you up, a cadaver in a meat grinder.
Dreadful, horrible way to go out in bloody bits and pieces,
A signature way to die on the rails from a shove in Gotham City.
Happens more and more often, like a twisted steel fad.
Street psychopaths attack and put you to sleep in the
City that never sleeps. Random attacks the thing.
Older more likely to be the next statistic, but
Anybody’s on the impromptu knock out list.
The prep probably walks while you in the ICU.
Light sentence, if any. Coddled criminals rights
More important than your insignificant citizen safety.
Illegals attacking police free to leave despite
The unwritten rule you don’t attack the
Protectors in blue or the hammer of justice
Hammers you harder, an example set.
New York of old before worms in the Big Apple,
And the bright lights of the city nights went dim
O how I mourn for you.

Bob Boyd

Diminishing Returns of Aging

What Golden Years?
Many old people getting cancer;
Cancer wards like geriatrics wards,
Longer you live the more your
Quality of life diminishes,
The more you become at risk
Of falls, some that can kill you.
More likely to die of flu related illness.
Less money more medical bills.
At some point you probably won’t be driving
You become more unsafe on the road.
Aging wrecks your breaking down body
Muscles shrink, body’s stiffens,
Skin gets ugly, wrinkles,
other marks, some scary looking,
Hopefully not cancer, but stay
Out of the blazing sun. You’re
Number one on skin cancer’s
Hit list.
Hearing and vision can be affected
Like an old machine breaking down.
People you knew or heard of
Dying more frequently.
You’re number one on
COVID’s hit list.

Bob Boyd

Lab Rats

I keep hearing aliens created us,
As if we were mere lab specimens –
Experiments.

Cannot accept this contrary notion,
As if we were not creations of –
God.

Of course because I cannot accept it
Doesn’t mean it is –
Untrue.

Nonetheless, I choose to wholeheartedly believe
Aliens implanted those notions in abductees –
Minds.

Or trolling tricksters seeking some laughs,
Maybe some attention, made up those –
Stories.

Bob Boyd

I love Cats But

I love cats
How they purr
How they meow
How the snuggle up to you
How how they look adorable
How they potty train themselves
How they are ideal for apartments
How they like to be petted all the time
How they can live in an apartment without disturbing neighbors

But

I can’t handle them jumping on tables, especially kitchen tables
I can’t handle them jumping on the sink next to drying dishes
I can’t handle how they can scratch up furniture

Maybe someday I’ll get one.

Bob Boyd

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