downtown Greensboro
pretty woman from Paris
maybe mon cheri
Bob Boyd
Free verse poetry, mostly fiction, some nonfiction
downtown Greensboro
pretty woman from Paris
maybe mon cheri
Bob Boyd
why you liking on grannies
benny said i said at 78 i’m too
damn old for pretty young things
you got to get realistic when
your testosterone is practically
on life support and your mojo
is nearly on empty and you ain’t
what you once was when you
could party all night and without
sleep work all day with barely
a yawn what do you want me
to do party all night and wreck
myself and be the no fool like the
old fool and be fooling myself
with a pretty young thing young
enough to be my granddaughter
hell at my old age even being
with a woman of 50 is like
robbing the cradle besides
with a cool granny I can
reminisce about woodstock
love ins psychedelic music the
peace and love days and
nights of the age of aquarius
the beatles white album
getting back to the garden
being bummed out turned on
and heavy and outasight
and groovy and going to
california with flowers in
our hair so give me a fine
as vintaged wine old granny
and let’s make rock and roll
love till those cows in woodstock
come home and those chickens
come home to roost – if we
can without busting hips
bursting varicose veins and
increasing aches and pains
excuse me gotta go late for
my hot date at the nursing home.
Bob Boyd
spirit named Philip
Canadians conjured up
taps on the table
Bob Boyd
sweet petite angel
doing her ASMR
a troubled soul soothed
Bob Boyd
Her holding flowers
beautiful, breathtaking sight
my heart enamored
Bob Boyd
Shiva is dancing
chaos mounting in the world
the ending pending
Bob Boyd
saw a wild wolf once
stared at me surprisingly
mesmerizing eyes
Bob Boyd
My love for you is so pure, so true, so strong that
I could even love you beyond the pleasures,
the ecstasies, of consummated physical love –
platonically.
My love for you is a higher everlasting love beyond
the ravishes of aging, the illnesses, the infirmities,
the declining passions, beyond anything and everything –
unendingly.
I love you immeasurably, and as long as you want me to,
I will keep on loving you no matter our trials or our fates,
and I will cherish you and love you always and –
eternally.
Bob Boyd
When the sun
melts in the sky
and all the stars die
I’ll still be loving you.
Bob Boyd
Shooting
Us
Dead
Quietly
Unseen
Invisible
Stealth.
Never
See
Him
Like
A
Sniper
Camouflaged
And
Hidden
In
A
Tree.
Watch
Out
Take
Cover
Duck
Next
Could
Be
You
Or
Me.
Bob Boyd
Read you have feelings
Believe that’s true
And that you
Can feel pain
And fear
And communicate
With other flowers,
A secret language
I wish I knew.
Bob Boyd
Cows may be hot sacred stuff
in India and sometimes
maybe obstacles in the streets.
But an elephant has them beat
Ganesha, a Hindu god and
The Remover of Obstacles.
Bob Boyd
rich and poor the same
in the outcomes of their lives
a roll of the dice
Bob Boyd
in my apartment
ghost haunts and harasses me
a dead ex wife
Bob Boyd
Do the Hindus have it right;
Shiva’s dance a real or
metaphoric thing?
A universe created and
destroyed in cycles,
who came up with that?
Shiva?
Imagine cosmos and
our world, starting over
again and again –
indefinitely.
No one trick pony,
recurring circus.
New entertaining delights,
different life forms each time.
Maybe green and gray
alien-looking creatures.
Recurring creation and destruction:
In like manner, do we recur too,
reincarnation maybe.
Who really knows?
Shiva?
If pure mythology,
still spiritually cool.
Dance of Shiva statue
amazing, loaded
with deep symbolism.
The mantra is cool
and powerful:
Om Namah Shivaya.
Tried it once, intense
and images of tigers
everywhere I went,
even on TV.
Shiva Synchronicity.
Bob Boyd
You might thrill at the prospect
of returning to this life, a better
2.0 you. I do not.
You might feel, we have to spin
on the wheel of rebirths until
we get it right and liberate.
But consider returning on the
cusp of a nuclear holocaust.
Bob Boyd
really done with her
he tells his supportive friends
a lie his heart knows
Bob Boyd
pigeons in the air
flying time out of their loft
a hawk closing in
Bob Boyd
Passing women in this brief life,
what’s the point? Procreation
of the species? Or are these
parades of princesses merely
random encounters, some, one,
or none, that stick to a man’s
millisecond life in the timeless
eternity and make him happy,
miserable or nonplussed. And
why is the nearly irrepressible
need for a female’s endearments
and addictive charms ingrained
in a man’s DNA to his dying day?
And how is it some monk men
seem immune to this persistent
need? At times, eight years strong,
I have been one of those monk men –
almost, not quite. Yet sometimes
stirring amore undercurrents still
well up in me breathing unguarded,
old man foolish longings into my
weathered heart. Occasionally
I ponder will death rid me of
this resurfacing need, that
I repress and try to negate, my
resistance borne of too many
disappointments and painful
heartaches, or unite me with
a bona fide eternal soulmate,
disappointments and heartaches
nevermore.
Bob Boyd
Sixteen each, we met at the YMCA dance and I trembled
when I got the courage to ask you for a dance, I remember
the band played Sixteen Candles. You honest to God felt like
an angel in my arms, your beautiful blonde hair heavenly,
your sky blue eyes, divine. I think I fell in love with you the
moment you were In my arms; it all felt so natural, so true,
so incredibly real, like nothing I’d ever experienced.
It was so many years, so many summers ago, I can’t remember
who said I love you first. I only remember I meant it forever. I
remember I loved you so much I would have died for you
without hesitation, without reservation.
And oh my God those kisses on the banks of the pond,
the pond waters caressing the shore, my head in you lap
looking up at your sunlit angelic face, captivated by your smile
and how beautiful you looked, how intoxicatingly sweet your
perfume was when I inhaled it with my every breath, and the
soft summer green grass like a love nest enveloping us in
romantic bliss and how when summer was over it was so hard,
so painful to be apart from you, sweet you.
I remembered how we planned to get married when we
graduated from high school, and how your heart was so true.
And how even though you lived faraway in New Jersey and
I lived in Massachusetts you spent your summers in Woburn
the city I lived In, and how I went to your prom in
Montclair, New Jersey before the summer love faded into a
dark frozen winter when all the summer flowers and our love
wilted and died. And how I cried and cried and cried.
And you broke what I thought was our forever vow when you
cheated on me with some guy going to Rutgers U., and I
remember how I never knew I had a heart that could be
shattered into a million pieces that would take years to put back
together, misspent years of dissipation and dissolution
not caring if I lived or died, such was the agony of the
fairy tale evermore love lost.
It was even more painful because I stayed true to you beyond
the distance, beyond the seasons, and I would have stayed true
to you eternally. Even now decades hence and me like a monk in
the world, sometimes I still think of what might have been,
what could have been. But alas we’re not sixteen anymore and
Sixteen Candles was so long ago, and you might be dead
and I almost was, and if we were to meet again, maybe I’d wake up
and see it was only like a dream, and that teenage summer
love was never meant to be, and I’d dry my older, wiser eyes.
Bob Boyd