Month: April 2024

When My World Was Young

When my world was young, few things mattered
Unlimited exuberance, hardly a care
Opportunities for love everywhere
Wild unabandoned times, living free
Perfect everlasting health, no medical worries
Party time days and nights, everything great
Old age never a consideration, unimaginable
Living in the sunshine of spring life forever
Till hairs began to gray, skin began to wrinkle
And my body starting falling apart
Like an old rusty failing machine
And the darkness of a winter life descended.

Bob Boyd

Old People Species

As a little snot-nosed kid at some point
I became aware of old people and
I thought they were like some other species
That came into the world that way
and had always been like that
And I knew instinctively I’d never be like them
When with age I saw everyone gets old
It didn’t seem like it would happen to me
I was young forever, old age not a reality
As if I had that fountain of youth in me
At age fifty, I started waking up to the reality
Of old age beginning to creep up on me
Now after many years I’ve made it there
And I kinda don’t care when some
Little snot-nosed kid who’s never been anywhere
Thinks I’m some old people species.

Bob Boyd

Cousin Norman

Cousin Norman seemed like such a nice guy
Gave me a ride when I was hitchhiking to school
When I was sixteen years old, had a great conversation
Got out of his car thinking what a nice guy
A month later he robbed a store, killed a young sales guy
Sent to jail after that, broke out and killed a prison guard
For ten years never found, was out in the open
Writing poems in shy town before he was captured
And put back behind prison bars again
Yet Cousin Norman seemed like such a nice guy.

Bob Boyd

When Public Executions Were Entertaining

The Tyburn Gallows was a popular place
Just outside London from 1108 to 1783
A great day’s entertainment, fun to see
Red faced criminals doing the Tyburn Jig
Hanging by their necks from the Tyburn Tree
Struggling to keep alive entertainingly
Crowds of thousands enjoyed the fun sight
Refreshments served to capitalize on the fun
Cheers and jeers, criminals about to be hung
Oh it was such grand fun, a family affair
Nothing like seeing people put to death
In old Tyburn square. Unless you were
Hanging from the Tree doing the Tyburn Jig.

Bob Boyd

Magic and Tricks

I can understand people being
Charmed by magic and its practices.
Who isn’t amazed seeing a magician
levitating in the air? Today common fare.
Rabbits out of hats, no longer in vogue.
Walking on water and such now the
Craze. Sometimes life seems
Made up of magic and tricks
When you find true love,
And it turns out to be like a trick
when true love disappears.

Bob Boyd

Over 20 Years of Dedicated Service and Screwed

Gave over 20 years to Senior Resources of Guilford, Received many accolades
Including an award from UNCG Department of Gerontology
Became adept at Medicare knowledge and helped
Countless people with all sorts of needs though love and compassion
Many wrote letters and made phone calls of appreciation
Cleaned up donations stagnating in a stockroom and a shed
Outrageous those items donated by people who expected them to get
Into the hands of people who needed them sat wasting away for years until
I decided to do something about that wasteful, unconscionable neglect
Though my indifferent director had no appreciation for my far beyond
The call successes in getting all 20 of those neglected donations into
The hands of those who needed them. I did that and far more, moving even
Hospital beds, wheelchairs, etc. My reward? The unappreciative director
Put someone else in charge of everything I had accomplished.
Could not suffer that outrageous slight, walked off the job
I’d worked at serving seniors in Guilford County for over 20 years
And no wonder Senior Resources of Guilford has so many bad reviews on Indeed, including mine now.

Bob Boyd

The Oxford Martyrs

In England in 1555 three men went on trial
At University Church of St Mary the Virgin
And burnt at the stake for different beliefs
In America in 2024 they shout down conservatives speakers
At Ivy League colleges for different beliefs
Sometimes the colleges refuse to let them speak
I’m surprised none have been burnt at the stake
Not much has changed.

Bob Boyd

What Matters to Me

I don’t care how rich you are
Riches are a negative to me
I don’t care how degreed you are
You might think you’re better than me
I don’t care how successful and important you are
You might be too self-centered and have no time for me
I do care about how, humble, compassionate, and kind you are
Those are the things that matter to me.

Bob Boyd

I Wonder Where You Are Today

16, beautiful, always nicely dressed
Worked at a drugstore in Burlington, MA
All the guys wanted to be with you
Dream girl, few could compare
I believed you’d always be true
If some lucky day I could be with you
But crossing the street one rainy day
Your life and beautiful you ended
By a careless teenage driver
One of the worst tragedies of
My wayward teenage years
I wonder where you are today

Bob Boyd

Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Survivor of Two Atomic Bombs

On business in Hiroshima on August 6th 1945 at 8:15 AM,
Tsutomu Yamaguchi heard an aircraft and thought he saw a parachute in the sky
Atomic bomb, Little Boy, 15 kilotons of TNT, exploded 2,000 feet above the city
80,000 people burned alive immediately. Tsutomu Yamaguchi saw the blast in the sky
Light brighter than the blazing sun shocked and temporarily blinded him.
The sound of the booming blast ruptured his eardrums, radiation burned his body.
Returned to his work in Nagasaki, able to work, air raid alarms sounded in the city;
Atomic bomb, Fat Boy, 21 kilotons of TNT, devastated Nagasaki on August 9th, 11AM,
Instantly killed 40,000 people. Miraculously Tsutomu survived that atomic bomb too,
High fever and vomiting for a week, became an advocate for nuclear disarmament.
Suffered from radiation-related ailments all his life, died at age 92, stomach cancer.
Today nuclear bombs have 455 and 800 kilotons of TNT. I pray never comes the doomsday
When those are dropped on any country, and so sad Tsutomu experienced such devastation.
And tragic over a hundred thousand people died in those explosions and more in the aftermath.
And wars still go on.

Bob Boyd

Missing 411

A full moon rises tonight. Oh God how that worries me.
My body sweats profusely, my heart beats louder;
I feel the changes in my body from mild man to terrifying beast,
Cracking sounds and hair sprouting all over me.
My canines turning into fangs, my height increasing to ten feet.
I feel inhumanly strong and invincibly unstoppable.
A howl I cannot suppress bursts out of my enlarged lungs
Before I run into the night seeking my frightened prey.
And if you don’t believe werewolves are real,
Pray you never see me on a full moon night.
You ask, “How come I’m not in the news?”
Because I’m a reluctant government experiment since 1973
Government contractors clean up the bloody messes
And keep my hundreds of kills out of the news,
No traces of the carnage, bodies never found.
Ever hear of Missing 411? Google it and you will see.

Bob Boyd

Oh How I Wonder About Being With You

Sometimes I think I’d love to be with you
Sometimes I think it would be like sticking
My hands into the flames of red hot fire
At the heartrending risk of getting burnt again
At other times I remember the wonders I see in you
Your inner beauty vastly beyond any outer beauty
Your captivating lightness of being, your joyfulness
And ponder if you’d be the love beyond loves
But wonder if because I’m a deep thinking man
Mystically spiritual and never ending philosophical
Ever questing new and fascinating knowledge
If our minds could ever meet in an Elysian Fields
Of ambrosial, mythical, epical immortal love
That would soar our hearts into the heavens
Oh how I wonder about being with you

Bob Boyd

I Don’t Know About You

I know about things like
Consciousness expansions
Bliss beyond measure
Peace unimaginable
White Light like the sun
Permanent kundalini energy
Palpable spiritual radiance
Amazing synchronicities
Spiritual dreams
Love without limits
Loving kindness
Compassion in action
But I don’t know about you
I can’t fathom
I can’t divine
I can’t prophesize
If I could trust you
If you’d be true
If you’d be there
If ever I needed you
If I could depend on you
And I’m thinking
I’m too old
My heart too
Battle hardened
From too many
Wars of Roses
To ever throw
The dice again.

Bob Boyd

An Appalling Level of Casual Brutality

Essex England, 1600s, witches everywhere
Elizabeth Clark, elderly with only one leg
Hair cut off, body searched, roughly treated
By three women searching for Devil’s mark
Later tied to a chair, denied sleep for days
Forced to confess by Witch Finder General
Matthew Hopkins, fantical, cruel, evil
Proudly broke the 80-year-old woman
Who lied to stop the sleep-deprived torture
Confessed to being a witch and claimed
Other women in her village witches too
Her life ended with 15 other women
Condemned as witches, hung on the gallows
At Chelmsford Market Square in 1645.

Bob Boyd

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