Month: March 2025

I heard you went looking for cowboys in Galveston.
Yee haa! Glad you’re no longer in my rodeo.
I wish you the best in your new roundup.
Happy trails to you and never come back.
You stole from me and always eyed others.
You thought I’d put up with your shenanigans.
But this old ironworker is harder than that,
And you made my heart hard as my steel hat.
So go mess with those cowboys, play your games,
Like the one you played so damn sneakily
When you disrespected and cheated on me.

Bob Boyd

I remember a year ago
when an attractive woman
grabbed my arm gently
while passing by me.

It wasn’t a romantic thing;
she had no intentions,
and I acted unaffected.
But oh what a feeling,
sent my senses reeling.

I hadn’t felt a woman’s
gentle touch in years
and had forgotten
about the power in
a woman’s touch
that a man
finds attractive.

Bob Boyd

Met her in Greensboro Park after dark
Fearless, she approached me first.
Surprised, I couldn’t believe
She was so utterly unafraid
In the scary darkness of Greensboro Park.
What if I were a rapist or a serial killer?

Dressed in a black cloak and a pointy hat,
Her fashion sense an eccentricity.
She started talking about the weather
I liked the sound of her melodious voice.
Her river of words mesmerized me.
As she kept talking about the weather,
I felt myself slipping dreamily away.

Then her words became letters in clouds
and I tranced out and lost consciousness.
I woke up alone, her and my wallet gone.

Bob Boyd

Women go to doctors for every little thing.
Wasting all their money on doctors – ka-ching.
Men avoid doctors like drinking a poisoned brew,
And doctors will only find something wrong with you.

Better to get as sick as a vomiting dog
And croak but not exactly like a croaking frog.
And when you’re dead and no doctor is billing you,
You’ll have saved bundles and bundles of money too.

Bob Boyd

When I was steeped in Eastern spiritual practices
and read about the legendary Tibetan Monks,
it was believed they were the most advanced adepts
possessing limitless supernatural powers.

I believed that when China invaded Tibet the
monks were so preternaturally powerful they
could chant mantras that would cloud the minds
of the advancing Chinese soldiers and erect a
psychic force field they could not pass.
But, alas, Chinese guns and bullets were more
powerful than mantras and supernatural powers.

Bob Boyd

People born with tragically deformed bodies
what in creation is the point of that?

Why are some born so disadvantaged
when most are not?

A person once told me God
doesn’t make mistakes

but perhaps nature is a saboteur
that like a devil sabotages God’s perfect works.

I don’t know why some people suffer
such disadvantaged fates.

I don’t believe it’s a karmic justice
they rightfully deserve.

And I wonder what happens to these
people when they die.

I write that thinking of a bigger picture
like when I read that blind people who

have near death experiences see
when they are clinically dead.

Bob Boyd

days and nights without you
so empty and so forlorn
thought we would be together
in love till our lives ended
with the possibility of us lasting
beyond this life into forever
but your love was only a dalliance
a masquerade of false affections
and I can see I’ll go into forever
without you and believe I’ll find
a true and lasting love there

bob boyd

I wonder how many of my classmates that I graduated with in 1964 at Woburn High School in Woburn, Massachusetts are still alive.

I imagine most of them have died, which saddens me.

Though I was riffraff and a troubled teen back then,
most of my classmates were how I wish I could have
been:

Like those who studied hard and got good grades.

Like those who played high school sports or participated in extracurricular activities.

Like those who behaved and didn’t get kicked out of
classes and school.

Had I been like them, it wouldn’t have taken me years and numerous hard knocks to finally reform myself, have satisfying achievements, and heal the scars that made me a troubled and rebellious teen in the class of 1964.

Thinking about the class of 1964, I’m dismayed about
how many, if not most, of those classmates have
perished and are no more except for memories by those
who cared about them, friends and family.

Though I believe, based on reading and listening to
many near death experiences, that the afterlife is
the awakening of a lifetime,

in this moody, reflective moment it saddens me that those classmates, once young and so alive in 1964, will all be gone … forever.

Bob Boyd

I was hard-bodied lean
and muscled up
as a teenager.

Worked out relentlessly,
liked getting pumped up
with muscles getting bigger
and body getting stronger,
increasing reps,
increasing weight,
stronger and bigger
every week.

Enjoyed the feel of the iron,
the hardness of it.
Didn’t mind the calluses
on my hands,
wore them like tributes
to my workout ethic.

I was hard-bodied lean
strong like the iron I lifted.

But when my first
girlfriend came into
my life back then,
I liked the gentle
weakness I felt
being with her
and thinking about her.

The softness of her love
felt far better than the
hardness of the iron
and made me far more
happy than working out
with iron ever could.

Bob Boyd

Though you’re decades gone and maybe dead and gone
like I almost was

I’ll never forget those kisses as we embraced on the summer’s grass next to the rippling waters of that pond in that small city, Woburn, MA.

Though we never consummated, went all the way, those kisses were more memorable, more wonderful, and far sweeter than

all the consummations, all the went all the ways, I ever had in my entire life.

Though you cheated on me and desecrated our teenage love, I hope you have had a wonderful life. And if you’re no longer living, I hope you are with the angels in heaven.

Bob Boyd

Man, I’m feeling that lyric
I’m imagining the feeling
the elation, the ecstasy
the celestial music
the angelic singing
the trumpets sounding
the bells ringing
the symphony of
unending heavenly bliss
and I can almost
hear heaven too

Bob Boyd

he is told to go to the emergency room
for what he thinks is a minor matter
he’s there for six long hours
but he’s not bother by that
he sees the staff are
overwhelmed with people
most in worse shape them him
or so he thinks

when he finally gets to see
the doctor he can’t believe
the doctor is keeping him
in the hospital to confirm
he has a blood cancer

he can’t believe it
he hasn’t been hospitalized
except for the day he was born

he has worked out for decades
is or was a healthy specimen
doesn’t drink smoke
do drugs or eat red meat
an unlikely candidate
for a deadly cancer

no time for sleep in the hospital
nurses and phlebotomists
testing and checking
on him day and night
he hates being confined
and he’s got fish to feed at home

days later he gets discharged
sick of hospital food tons of tests
no peace and no real sleep

a year and loads of treatments
and arm punctured blood tests
finally he’s free of the cancer
improved and reborn better
personally and spiritually

the trials the treatments
a triumph and he lost his
fear of death forever

bob boyd

It was like something out of a horror movie
when my bride to be was in the hospital
hysterical and attacked by a monstrous beast
that the doctors thought had been a bear.

She was lucky, only a wound. But her mind
was terribly traumatized. The psychological
wound was worse.

Things got worse weeks later when a full
moon lit up the night sky and my bride to
be screamed at me to get out of her
apartment before I died.

I didn’t take her seriously at first. But when
she howled and began to morph into what
I realized was a werewolf, though shocked
and terrified, I could not leave her,
my bride to me.

Perhaps God was on my side that night. When
she fully morphed into that giant howling
nightmare, a real life horror, she spared me,
ran past me and into the forest behind her
house.

My bride to be broke off our engagement after
that, refused to see me. And I kept hearing of
people torn to shreds on the news during
full moon nights.

Though it broke my heart, I knew what I had to do,
a gun and silver bullets.

One night as the moon was becoming full, I broke
into her home just as she was howling and morphing.
I aimed my gun at what was no longer her, that
giant hairy beast with evil eyes that radiated death,
but I didn’t have the heart to pull the trigger.

I dropped the gun because though she had become
a monster, something in me still loved her.
I think even in her morphed monster form,
she still loved me and spared me with
only a bite instead of tearing me to pieces.

Now she is my bride to be again, werewolves
in love forever.

Bob Boyd

I like underdogs and antiheroes
I like them more than winners
and heroes.

I like seeing losers become
winners and the unlikely
become heroes.

I love the movies where they
are uplifted and glorified.

It’s wonderfully inspiring to see
characters like many, or most,
of us prevail in the challenges
and hard times of life.

Maybe I like underdogs and antiheroes
because I was an underdog in high school
and some teachers thought I end up
in jail because I was so troublesome.

Maybe because I proved them wrong
never spent a day in jail, never
committed a crime.

Spent the remainder of my work
history like an underdog reborn as a
nobler dog

for decades helping numerous
elderly people with their needs,
consoling them and brightening their
waning and often sad days.

But whatever the reason why, I’ll
always be rooting for underdogs
and antiheroes.

Bob Boyd

He came from Looneyville, Texas,
and he damn sure lived up to its name,
traveled all over the country doing crazy things.
He got drunk and kissed cars in Punta Gorda, Fla,
thrown in the pokey for public intoxication.
Somersaulted off a train in Little Rock, Ak,
broke an arm and nearly died.
Howled at the moon in San Fran, Ca,
got arrested for disturbing the peace.
Last I heard he moved to Odd, Wv,
felt it was a place where he could fit in,
marry a like minded wife and raise
a family of sixteen crazy kids.

Bob Boyd

On a trek through a nearby forest
spied Bigfoot sitting on a boulder
reading a book of my poems.
Having seen Bigfoot a number of
times before, I wasn’t surprised.

I was surprised seeing him
reading with eyeglasses on.
I didn’t know he needed eyeglasses
for reading, and I wondered where
he got the prescription for them.

I was more surprised to see him
reading a book of poems by me
since I’ve never published a book
of my poems and don’t care to.

I could only speculate somehow he
took the unauthorized liberty of
publishing them himself.

I know what you’re thinking. It’s
absurd to think of that hairy beast
having the ability to print a book.

To which I must retort, you have
no idea of the magical things that
Bigfoot can do, and, by the way,
he’s not just a hairy beast.

Just as I was about to ask him
where the hell did he get a book
of poems I’d never published,
a portal appeared. Bigfoot laughed,
waved, and disappeared into it.

I tried to follow him to catch that
rascal, but the portal evaporated
just as I tried to enter it.

And the mystery of how Bigfoot
was reading a book of my poems
I never had published perplexed me
for a few weeks.

After pondering the anomaly
extensively day and night, now
my guess is with his paranormal
powers he probably psychically
manifested the book just to,
per usual, play a prank on me.

Bob Boyd

a little sugar does a soul right
a little sweetness does no harm
delights the senses
feeds the soul
enlivens the mind
a dose of pleasure
the sweetness
the sugar
in a romantic kiss

bob boyd

Twice I thought I’d found the love of my life.
Number one when I was a troubled teenager
(but with a heart that was true and a
gentleman to women)
who lived in New Jersey and I lived in Mass.

After about a year, she cheated on me with
a college guy, broke my heart, and ended
my feelings, my love, for her forever.

Number two was a social worker when I was past
middle age and felt our true love was forever.

It lasted six years until she was diagnosed
with a host of health problems, and like a
martyr decided she didn’t want to be a burden
on me despite my wanting to care for her and
love her no matter the medicals, no matter what.

Now I wish and hope, probably foolishly, that
number three and the real one will be
the love of my life in my afterlife.

I don’t see or seek any move loves of a lifetime
in my waning earthly life, even if I live to be 100.

Bob Boyd

Too many women are murdered in this world
45,817 between 1996 and 2020 in the USA
mostly by men they knew or had loved.

God Almighty, why does this have to be,
and how can any man be so evil and so
cowardly as to kill the gentler, fairer sex?

I don’t believe in a hell, but this makes me
wish there is one to send these monsters to.

And I hope all the women they murdered
automatically go to a place like a heaven
regardless of what kind of lives they led.

And if they go to such a blissful paradise
instantly when murdered, I hope and pray
that the way they died won’t even matter,
will be an insignificant memory in a world
of unending happiness and eternal peace.

Bob Boyd

Gypsy woman how you mesmerized me.
Lured me away from home and friends.
Captured my soul. Stole my heart
And isolated me with your magic.

When you tired of me.
Tried to have me murdered
By your new next fool
Who only wounded me.

You underestimated
My payback capabilities,
Did some magic on you.

Misfortune followed
When you and your fool
Were sent to prison.

And you died there
Ironically by a gypsy woman
For offending her gypsy heritage
By pretending to be a gypsy.

Bob Boyd