Month: March 2024

White Light

We’re all just people trying to make out way through this world
Some of us don’t get too far, dead before we barely start
Some of us meet terrible fates, wounded, murdered, debilitated
Some of us have twisted terrible lives, harder challenges
I was one of those people with a twisted terrible life
Undeservedly, a stroke of grace, a powerful spiritual experience
Lit the way for me to find a better way through this world
Now that my life is almost done, I’m looking forward to
Making my way through the higher, greater life
That white light spiritual experience remade me for.

Bob Boyd

Sound of It

In a tranquil field
Flowers and weeds
Locked in mortal combat
On the serengeti plans
Lions
Hunting prey
In the cosmos
Black holes
Devouring stars
In a junkyard
In Kentucky
A mechanic
Dismembering cars
Sitting at my computer
In Greensboro, NC
I don’t know what
This poem means
I just like the
Sound of it

Bob Boyd

I’ve Got to Stop Listening to 30s Music

30s music romantic lyrics, so good, so sublime
Sometimes they start to get to me like
When a crooner sings about meeting
His love of a lifetime under a blue moon
Or another sings it had to be you
When he finally meets his dream lady
Then another sings about saying good night
To his sweetheart and how they’ll meet tomorrow.
And some women with a sweet enchanting voice
Sings she’s got a feeling she’s falling in love with me
And I start remembering what it feels like to fall in love
When I get elated, romantic feelings I’ve just about forgotten
And that woman becomes the most beautiful woman in the world
Making all over women lackluster by comparison
Making my emotions enlivened with unending love for her
Longing for her incomparable company every single day
Thinking about her incessantly, remembering things she said.
And I start feeling like bringing an imaginary woman dozens of roses
And writing incredibly romantic love poems to her
And forgetting I’m kind of a don’t need no woman monk,
But oh how I love those 30s music lyrics, so good, so sublime.
And I love that music and those lyrics so much
That I’ll never stop listening to 30s romantic music.
I’ll just have to stay strong and forget about women …
Forget about women … forget about women ….

Bob Boyd

Country Living

Thought I’d love country living
Breathing clean country air every day
Avoiding congested city traffic and crazy drivers
Observing deer, a variety of birds, and other animals
Strolling down quiet, peaceful country roads at night
Living a carefree low pollution serene life
Enjoying a refreshing country living dream
Woke up from the dream after a about a week
Stores shut down at 9 PM every night
Nothing nearby for a late night smack
Or a craving for some pizza and a cola
Nearest grocery store like a continent away
Strolling down country roads perilous at night
No sidewalks, risks of rabid animals, narrow roads
Locals drove like maniacs down those narrow roads
Like nearsighted drivers racing in the Indy 500 at night
Good luck to you if you were taking that nightly stroll
Was relieved when I packed up and returned to the city.

Bob Boyd

Guppies

Maybe the Hindus have it right. Maybe we reincarnate,
starting as the lowest lifeforms and evolving up to
human births and eventually attain enlightenment
where we get off the wheel of rebirths and attain the
Sat Chit Ananda, the Eternal Bliss Consciousness.
I’m thinking about this because as I look at the guppies
in my aquariums swimming about merrily, I’m wondering
do they just die into nothingness, and that’s it? Oblivion,
and it’s over for them? Or maybe they die into the tunnel
of White Light and emerge into a guppy heaven. A celestial
world freed from oppressive fish tanks and whatever cares
earthbound guppies have, swimming and playing ecstatically
in bliss-laden bodies of water, vast as oceans with no predators
to annihilate their joyous lives in an eternal, aquatic paradise.

Bob Boyd

Bishop Bonner, The Devil’s Dancing Bear (1500-1569)

Bishop Bonner did the Devil’s work
Under Queen Mary the First in 1555
Torturing hundreds of Protestants
To renounce their faiths,
And become Catholics
In the Tower of London.
Breaking many on the rack,
Burning many at the stake.
Supposedly a man of God,
He had the modus operandi of
A cruel, murderous psychopath.
But when Queen Elizabeth
Ascended to the throne in 1558,
Bishop Bonner was thrown
In jail and died there in 1569,
His legacy of infamy the only
remnant of him remaining.
Would liked to have been an
Observer in the afterlife,
To see where he went,
Perhaps indeterminately
Broken on the rack and
Burned at the stake.

Bob Boyd

A Long Ago Fairy Tale Love

Summer days on the shores of a picturesque pond
His head on her lap blissfully gazing up at her
The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen
The backdrop of a beaming summer sun,
Enhancing her radiant blonde hair,
her incredible, goddess-like looks.
Knew they had a fairy tale love forever.
Though they lived states away and only saw
Each other during teenage summers,
He never knew love could be so wonderful,
So consuming, so blissful beyond anything
he’d ever experienced or could ever have imagined.
But like Icarus who flew too close to the sun
When she cheated on him and ruined everything,
His wings of love singed, he crashed to the ground.
Days turned into dark nights of dead dreams.
A saddened sun sobbed behind consoling clouds.
A melancholic moon cried in a lovelorn night.
And rivers of tears fell from his eyes
Over the loss of a fairy tale love.

Bob Boyd

Maximum Gratitude Beyond Measure

This may sound kinda contrary, but I’m grateful I got cancer, no regrets. It vanquished my whitecoatitis; It liberated me from medical fears. It gave me admiration for the medical profession. It abolished my hate of hospitals; now I love what they do, though I still don’t want to be stranded in them, and I hate those freakin’ unwieldy hospital gowns. I’ve become like the phoenix out of the ashes, more inwardly powerful, my character enhanced. I’m grateful for the knowledge of cancer I gained and for all the wonderful infusion room nurses who like angels on earth helped save my life. I like how “I’ve been there,” kinda like street cred and can connect, commiserate, and relate with others with cancer so easily. It made my presentations ten times more powerful, my kinda like street cred makes me more legit. The worst thing happening, the dreaded C gave me the calmness of a Zen Master, something I never had even with years of attempts to reach that elevated state. And if I have to face cancer again, I’m game. And if it kills me I’m good with that too. The way I see it, I get to go to my real home, the abode of unconditional love and eternal bliss. You may doubt that, but I’m as sure as you are a living, breathing human being reading this that that’s where I’m going. I base that on extensive research into the land of NDES, shared death experiences, deathbed visions, a mystical experience I’ve had for over 50 years and having experienced bliss beyond description and the peace beyond understanding many times in the past and an unwavering faith in the Ruler of Time and Space despite His name being taboo in many quarters now. And this is a stream of consciousness poem.

Bob Boyd

The Birdman of Stirling Castle

In the Autumn of 1507 in Stirling, Scotland
an Italian-born abbot, John Damian de Falcuis
Studied birds in flight and believed he could fly.
He fashioned the feathers of eagles into wings
He wore on his arms. Clad in the makeshift
Flying machine, he leaped off Stirling Castle.
For a moment, he hovered in the sky
As if, like a bird he really could fly;
Then plummeted seventy feet to
The unwelcoming ground. Miraculously,
he survived, woke up in a doctor’s urgent care,
Many injuries and a shattered thigh bone.
He never could walk properly after that
And he stayed out of the sky.

Bob Boyd

Imagine if You Were Born to be Fish Food

Imagine if you were born fated to be fish food. Imagine knowing your demise was only a purchase away. And since you couldn’t go to church and no proselytizers would be knocking on the door of your plastic container to save your soul, you wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hades of getting to heaven.
You’d probably be hoping that death was a Hindu thing where you could come back at a higher birth.
Maybe living the good life as one of the privileged, high born fish who ate the fish food. If your karma had been even better, maybe you’d come back living the dream as one of the customers buying the fish food.

Bob Boyd

Thailand’s Sak Yant Tattoo Festival

An hour west of Bangkok
Sak Yant animal spirit tattoos
Administered by Buddhist Monks.
Tranced devotees run like crazed animals,
Growling and gesturing, newborn beasts
Through crowds of thousands upon thousands
To the front of the astonished crowds
Captured, restrained by handlers
Stabilized by the Buddhist monks.
Is it as claimed the cleansing of Karma
Manifesting as spirit animals
Or crazed imaginations run wild?
Whatever the reason, it’s a bizarre sight.
You will never forget once you’ve seen it.

Bob Boyd

Two Summers and a Fairy Tale

I knew you for two summers, met you at a teenage dance.
We danced to the song Sixteen Candles, and with each step
We became more enamored, knew we’d be a couple.
Teenagers we fell in love, planned to marry when older,
Vowed we’d be together forever, prince and princess, the fairy tale.
I loved you so much it was like I was living in a heavenly dream 24/7.
But when when the two summers became chilled by ill-fated fall winds,
You were untrue, and the heavenly dream became a heartbreaking reality.
The sun hid its tears behind darkening clouds.
The moon turned blue in the dismal night.
And I, heart-wounded prince, whose vow of love ever true
Couldn’t believe the princess killed the fairy tale,
And I could no longer be with you.

Bob Boyd

Four Young Girls from Birmingham

September 15, 1963 bombed to death in the 16th Street Baptist Church In Birmingham:
Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14) Carol Denise McNair (11).
I’ve seen their photos, read their stories – long ago,
Bright futures awaited those innocent, young girls.
Reading about them, tears fell. It was all so heartbreakingly sad.
Soulless monsters, the killers didn’t seem to care;
They didn’t seem contrite and ashamed, as they should have been.
Wondered how God could have let that happen, and in the sanctity of a church.
The only way I can reconcile their awful, unjust fates
Is that surely God must have needed four more angels in heaven.
Never forget those four young girls from Birmingham.

Bob Boyd

The Wooing of an Inscrutable Woman

What is it going to take to woo this inscrutable woman?
Am I going to have to crawl over a hundred miles of broken glass?
Or swim the seven seas seventeen times?
Or like a gladiator of old, fight off hundreds of lions in a coliseum?
Or scale Mount Everest ten thousand times?
Good God in heaven, what on earth is it going to take?
In an attempt to make her favor sweeter,
I think I’ll start with some chocolate mousse from Harris Teeter.

Bob Boyd

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