4 - 2024 - Bob Boyd's Poetry

We Had It All

Like the song Key Largo said, we had it all
Until you got involved with that crazy cult
Abandoned me and our true love
For a fake Avatar in Goa, India
Who promised full enlightenment
In a single lifetime by obeying him
Sad you fell for his impossible con
Heart broken and screwed up
I vowed never another woman
Became like a bona fide monk
Three years later, you came home
A disheveled, babbling crazy women
Used and abused by the bogus holy man
You got delivered by an Exorcist
Died a year later in Harvard Square
Drug overdose, no coming back
I placed flowers and tears on your grave

Bob Boyd.

When Dan’s Wife Died

When his wife, Jessica,
A stabilizing influence on him, died
Dan returned to the wild ways of his youth
Drugs, alcohol, badass attitude
Robbed a liquor store in Stoneham, MA
Shot the clerk and got away
Drove to Abilene, TX the next day
Stopped at a convenience store
In Canton, OH to rob it on a whim
Lazy-eyed teenage girl at the counter
Quick drawed a gun and shot dan dead
Teenage girl behind the counter
Psychopathic pretty in pink killer
Who shot the real counter guy
And posed as easy prey employee.
If only Dan’s wife hadn’t died.

Bob Boyd

Hannibal

In 218 BC, I crossed the alps with my
Famous North African War Elephants.
I brought burning hell to Rome
Winning scores of victories
In battles at the Battle of Ticinus,
Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae.
The arrogant Romans felt their
defenses were impregnable.
They’d never met the likes of me.
Nor could they believe I’d taken
Those magnificent beasts across
The treacherous Alps.
But fifteen years later at the
Battle of Zuma, the Romans
Defeated me and I fled.
I was on the run for years
Until at the court of Bithynia,
I was handed over to the Romans
And poisoned myself to death,
Rather than let the Romans
Torture and execute me.

Bob Boyd

Madam Wei

I enjoyed a high reputation as a great
poetess in China in the 11th century.
My poems were considered as good
As the famous poet Li Quingzao’s
Celebrated masterpiece poems.
Though some nearsighted critics
Disagreed (No doubt because
I was a woman, and they were men).
Had I been a man, they would
Have raved about my poems
And hailed me as the
greatest poet in all of China.
I’m sad to say time wasn’t kind
To my best selling published collection
Madame Wei’s Works, that made
The China Times best seller list
For ten years. I suspect Misogynist
Male critics burned them after I died.

Bob Boyd

Lenora

At age seven, my sister Lenora
Developed an obsession with ants.
If you accidentally stepped on one
She would scold you for a week.
When my parents bought me an
Ant Farm one joyous Christmas,
As soon as I received the ants
Through the postal service,
I remember the stormy day,
Lenora went maniacally psycho
And smashed the farm to bits,
And set all the bewildered ants free
When a teenager, her obsession worsened;
She vowed to set all the ants free
At what she called the ant gulag,
The ant farm factory in Pittsburg, PA.
I worried she’d become a loopy
My suspicions confirmed when
She broke into the factory,
Somehow set numberless ants free
And tried to burn the factory down.
Now she’s spent fifty years
In a psychiatric hospital composing
Crazy paeans to ants while I write
Weird poems about stink bugs
Obsessively and dream about
Inventing a Stink Bug Farm
And selling it to the world.

Bob Boyd

Dream Woman

Saw you in a dream last night.
Dark-skinned Nubian beauty,
Radiant brown eyes
Never saw a woman
More beautiful than you
Siren-like, I felt the lure
Kissed me in the dream
And the kiss, the kiss …
Unlike any ever
I wanted more
But the dream ended
And you haven’t been
In any of my dreams since
Were you real or imaginary
Some astral angel
Did our dreams intersect
Most pleasurably
Come back and
Let’s kiss again

Bob Boyd

5 O’clock Somewhere

I’m wondering what Jimmy Buffet is doing in the afterlife.
Is he singing and doing concerts for all those people in the Great Beyond?
And does his music and vocals sound better there?
Is he getting drunk on heavenly bliss in some kind of ecstatic Margaritaville?
Is he living on a beach next to an ocean of unconditional love and eternal bliss?
Is he able to get any of those Golden-era guitars he collected there?
Are there legions of parrot heads and even angel fans in his neck of the afterlife?
And is it 5 O’clock somewhere there or is time nonexistent?
Or is it 5 O’clock everywhere on some ethereal, eternal clock?
Tell me true if you’re a psychic, a medium, or a seer.

Bob Boyd