Month: July 2024

They met at a high school dance when they were both sixteen,
And the song Sixteen Candles was playing during their first dance.
To their surprise, they had the same birthday, April 15.
They got married after high school, he became a mechanic.
She went to beautician school and opened a beauty shop.
They had three children, one died in an awful auto accident.
The other two went to college and had comfortable lives.
She got breast cancer at thirty-three and survived it.
He got a heart attack at sixty-six and survived that.
Now they’re celebrating their birthdays in a nursing home,
Eighty-six candles and still madly in love after all those years.

Bob Boyd

I’d been on sixteen ghosts hunts
But never saw any real ghosts like Midnight Mary.
In fact, I never really saw a ghost before Mary.
Sure my equipment suggested ghost activity,
But that’s not as spooky as coming face to face
With a real dead spirit roaming the earth.

I’d heard about a ghost named Midnight Mary,
At the old, abandoned Bradmore Hotel.
I even saw an alleged photo of her ghostly face.
The photo looked fake, bogus urban legend stuff.
Supposedly people died messing with Mary.
Inside the Bradmore heard a scary rustling near me.
Shined my flashlight in the direction of the sound
Rats dashed away to their hiding places.
Searched the entire hotel, saw no sign of Mary.

Just more nonsense I mumbled to myself.
Drove to a motel, disappointed, another fake lead.
Retired for the night, fell into a dreamless sleep.
Heard an eerie sound fill the room, thought it was a dream,
One minute like a witch’s cackle, the next a ghostly wail.
Felt hands clutching my throat choking me to death,
Frightened, opened my eyes: Midnight Mary!
Died of shock in that old motel bed, my face frozen in fear.
Sometimes when you hunt ghosts, they hunt you.
Now as if I were bitten by a vampire, I’m a ghost too,
And every night I haunt this motel in which I died.

Bob Boyd

He pursued her unmercifully state to state
After she ran away from his physical abuse.
He kept her in a state of nonstop panic,
The monster that he had become or always was.
She bought a gun, kept it under her pillow.
She never needed the gun for self defense.
Fortunately he died in a road rage argument.
He drew the gun he planned to kill her with
On an quick draw off duty police officer,
Who shot him to death on highway 99.
No tears fell for this abusive monster,
Except tears of grateful relief
When she learned he was dead.

Bob Boyd

Tired of going to doctors
Done with taking all those pills
Sick of all the medical bills
That arrived almost everyday
He made the hard decision
To let nature have its way
Stopped all the medical
Savored the freedom
From doctors and pills
And the never ending bills
Died peacefully a week later

Bob Boyd

Kayleen always loved my red shirt,
The one she bought me for my birthday.
I didn’t like the shirt but never told her so.
I wore it just for her expressed delight.
You do things like this for the one you love.
Since she passed away two years ago
From a fast moving colon cancer,
I wear that red shirt more often now
It reminds me of the love she had for me.

Bob Boyd

She said the sands of our time had ran out
She loved to speak endlessly in cliches
I said fine by me our love is like a dried up desert
She said you don’t know what you’ve got until you lose it
I said good by me lose our worn out relationship
She said all’s well that ends well
I said then end it and go
She said departure is such sweet sorrow
I said methinks it’s bittersweet
She said lets kiss and make up
I said love can find a way

Bob Boyd

Met a woman named Angel
Angel or Devil I wondered
Or maybe a bit of both
Publically a perfect Angel
Privately a conniving Devil
Loved her public persona
But her private one
Scared the hell of of me

Bob Boyd

Keen eyed robin glides to the ground
Wings outstretched eyes penetrating
Lands gracefully with beak ready
No eyed worm feels predator vibration
Too late he realizes death is at hand
Robin plucks him out of the ground
Worm too slow to make an escape
Worm sees his whole life before him
Rubin hungrily devours worm
Worm see white tunnel of light
And burrows his way through it
To his dark underground heaven
His true home of infinite bliss

Bob Boyd

Those macho tough guy actors
That kicked ass on the movie screens
When I was a young fan back then
Are now dead or old and feeble
Their virility, their hard physiques
Now merely weakened memories
Tough guys asses kicked by aging

Bob Boyd

How I miss those days when you’d come to see me
At the end of your work days doing your social work.
How I miss your incomparable, compassionate heart
And all those wonderful nights we spent together
Until that day you went to a doctor’s appointment,
And came to see me crying but wouldn’t tell me why
Except that many things were wrong with your body,
And in a week you were scheduled for an operation.
You never told me what those terrible things were;
I never tried to force you to tell me what had happened.
I remember how you kept telling me I was so full of life,
And I could see where our bleak future was going.
Then what I had seen arrived so heartbreakingly
The day you decided to be a martyr and leave me.
Oh how that pained my heart and how I wanted
To help you through whatever happened to you.
Despite the cards and flowers on your doorstep
You never relented and I thought you were dying.
But I learned years later you somehow still lived,
And that was sufficient consolation for me
And the years of worries I had had for you.

Bob Boyd

Born destined for schizophrenia
Nothing he could do to prevent it
Wondered why he had to have it
Why couldn’t he have been like others
Not stricken with a mental health curse
Why the hallucinations, the delusions
The disorganized thinking and the voices
Sometimes he felt like taking his life
But despite the terrible symptoms
And feeling like ending it all
He was stronger than that
The medicine and the talk therapy
Ferried him through the stormy seas
He managed a successful career
A counselor for the mentally ill
Married a wonderful wife
Had a great life

Bob Boyd

Saw her in a dream a week after we broke up.
In the dream she wanted to get back with me.
But I was an introvert and she an extrovert.
Me always home by myself and lonely too much.
Her always out with friends, didn’t like staying home.
So I told her I couldn’t live that way and she had to go.
Lost track of her in the streams of the passing years.
Heard she married a trucker and drove trucks with him.
Saw her in another dream a few weeks ago,
Fire all around her as she bid me goodbye.
Next day saw in the nightly 7PM news,
Her and her trucker died in a house fire.

Bob Boyd

Don’t know why I called my Chihuahua Fred.
I guess it just seemed like fun to call Fred Fred.
He was such a fearless and rambunctious pooch.
He’d always chase bigger dogs out of the yard,
And they’d run away from him fooled by his bluster.
It was as if God put the heart of a lion in him.
And he had the spirit of a courageous hero.
When a pit bull was about to savage a neighbor’s child,
Fred charged the pit bull before he reached him.
The pit bull savaged Fred like a little rag doll instead
And left Chihuahua Fred bloodied and dead.
The child got away because he sacrificed his life for him.

Bob Boyd

I was a good man in my day.
Born in Burlington, Massachusetts
Followed the golden rule to the letter
Tried to live right, respected everyone
Married my high school love, Marjorie
Worked in a lumber factory six days a week
Went to church every single Sunday
Helped with the collections, sang in the choir

Then an accident at work almost killed me
Went to the hospital, lost both legs
Became a depressed and broken man
Barely making enough money to live on
Why did God let this happen to me
I was a devout churchgoer who served Him

Marjorie found a whole and new man
She said sorry I can’t take it anymore
Broke my heart in a million pieces
Never got over losing her forever
I could have tried to be like those
Inspirational disabled guys
Smiling on TV news shows

Maybe once I could have been like them
But that was no longer legless me
Gave up on God and my lousy life
On a Sunday church morning In 1995
When I shot myself to death

Bob Boyd