fish killing epiphany

he liked to fish as much as he could.
he’d caught trout, perch, bass and more.
he’d caught so many fish he couldn’t keep score.
but one day after thirty years of avid fishing
he had an epiphany. he realized he’d been
wantonly taking all those fish lives for sport
instead of fishing for sustenance and survival.
what he had done amounted to no more
than a wasteful, selfish fish killing spree,
and he never fished again after that.

bob boyd

terror in a coffin

he woke up in a coffin
dark and terrifying.
it wasn’t a nightmare;
it was horrifyingly
real.

claustrophobic
he panicked
and screamed
and screamed
till his lungs
almost burst.

he scratched
the coffin frantically
in his crazed,
screaming state
trying in vain
to open it.

but the weight
of six feet
of freshly
shoveled earth
kept the
coffin hermetically
sealed and
the horror
engulfed him.

he panicked gasping
for his dying breath
over and over,
his heart pumping
like an overworked
failing piston,
and he mercifully died
of a massive heart
attack.

and he found freedom
from the coffin
as his spirit rose
out of the coffin,
out of the grave
and into the light
of the afterlife.

bob boyd

hot and cold temperament

i kept wondering what ticked
inside her oblong brain
what the hell made
her the way she was
half crazy, half normal,
her brain short-circuited
her synapses
intermittently transmitting
her brain cells
sometimes fried
sometimes overcooked
one day she loved me
next day she hated me
i gave it a good year
all i could take,
my mind baked
from her split personality
her unceasing drama
her love hate
thing for me
and her hot and cold
temperament

bob boyd