Month: April 2025

A widow she lives alone
her husband of sixty years
died a year ago
and is buried in
Forest Lawn Cemetery
she visits his gravesite
except when it’s raining
like her tears that keep falling
she thinks of him
and feels like crying again
and wishes she had died too
and it’s been so unbearable
starting her life all over
alone and without him
she hopes and she prays
she’ll be with him again
after all those happy years
that were mostly like heaven

dying from a terminal cancer
she lays down in her bed
closes her eyes and
feels her life ending
she opens her eyes
right before she dies
and sees her husband
above her in white light
smiling and holding out
his hand toward her
her soul leaves her body
she smiles and takes his hand
and hand in hand heart to heart
they float up to heaven
in love and married forever.

Bob Boyd

Pounding of drums
gyrating of hips
swirling of bodies
whirling of long thick hair
hands moving eloquently
as if hands could speak
eyes occasionally looking up
somewhere between
the pounding of drums
the gyrating of hips
the eyes looking up
the mesmerizing effect
the trancelike feeling
I realize the hula
is more than a dance
a spiritual practice
a form of worship
to whichever deity
or deities out of the
hundreds of gods
and goddesses
in the Hawaiian
spiritual tradition
the dynamite dance is
zealously praying to.

Bob Boyd

Cursed forever
victim of a vamp’s
vampiric bite
I rise from the grave
every dark night
fanged creature
ghoulish soul
hideous intentions
mesmerizing gaze
subdues my prey
and obediently
they surrender to me
without hesitation
without reservation
they offer me their
inviting jugular veins
my fangs pierce
and I imbibe
and sate myself
on their warm
invigorating blood
the hunt for prey
continues until
I’m caught and
slaughtered
with a stake
only to be reborn
a fresh vampire
in my next life.

Bob Boyd

Also called Stamps Cemetery located in
the mountains of East Tennessee.

Some graves new, many old
and decaying,
made of sandstone.

Inverted stars on a few graves,
mistaken for pentagrams,
which is why the cemetery is
wrongly thought to have
evil witches buried in it.

Some old Tent stone graves,
two long thin slabs propped up
against two triangular caps
at the ends, often with
headstones – maybe to protect
corpses from animals. Maybe
just tradition.

Many people named Stamps
buried there, one named
Stanford Stamps born in 1811,
died in 1895, age 84.

No witches, only about 80
regular people buried there.

Many tombstones from the 1800s.
More are new.

No ghosts, maybe the Stamps
Cemetery is too boring for them,
or the good religious mountain
people all went to heaven
instead of hanging around dead.

Some old graves had flowers
in front of them. Many had coins
on the tops of the tombstones.

Perhaps the coins were symbols
of good luck in the afterlife.

No one seems to mess with the
coins, perhaps for fear
of being cursed or
out of profound respect
for the dead.

The cemetery is serene
with only the sounds of
birds chirping in the background.
Perhaps the birds are singing
sweet dirges for the dead.

Got a good peaceful feeling
seeing that cemetery on YouTube,
wouldn’t mind being buried in a
peaceful cemetery like that
when I die.

Bob Boyd

Six young women in their teens
beautiful dancers at Ziegfeld Follies.
Futures bright, big dreams of
becoming famous and successful.
The world was theirs.

Made a pact in 1916 to meet
at a restaurant in New York
in 1936 to talk about their
successes in those 20 years.

Olive Thomas, Fifi Alsop,
Martha Mansfield, Lilyan Tashman,
Kathryn Lambert and
Bessie Chatterton Poole
were their names.

Olive Thomas died in 1920,
ingested a poison by mistake.

Fifi Alsop died in 1922,
alcoholism combined with
a drug for sleeping.

Martha Mansfield, died in 1923,
burned to death in an accident.

Lilyan Tashman died in 1934,
Abdominal Cancer.

Bessie Chatterton Poole
Died 1928, Heart Disease.

Kathryn Lambert, only one
who survived for the meeting
in 1936.

She probably said a silent
prayer for the others who
weren’t there and wondered
why they had such tragic fates
that stole the dreams they
had when they were teenage
Ziegfeld Follies dancers
and the world was theirs.

Bob Boyd

Waves of joy
streams of pleasure
your love washes
over me

Bob Boyd

My friend, Don, fed up with women,
chose a life size doll instead of a real woman
at an exorbitant cost of $3,000.

I said that’s a high price tag for a doll.
Don said, “It’s a bargain compared to how
much money I’ve blown on women.”

I let the conversation go at that,
but wondered if Don had lost his mind,
and, besides, I wondered what would
he and the doll he called Alma talk about?

I got the answer a week later when I
visited Don and Alma, and Don spoke to
her as if she was carrying on a conversation
with him.

A year later, Don got really crazy and said
Alma had died of cancer and he had buried
her in his backyard.

Two weeks later, Don showed up at my apartment
with a crazed look in his eyes.

“Alma’s haunting me!” he said.

I said, “Maybe you should see a shrink.”

Offended, Don stomped out of my apartment
and yelled he needed an exorcist and not a shrink.

Days later, worried about Don, I visited him at his
house and found him dead in his backyard with
a resurrected, dirt covered Alma on top of him.

The police said he died of a massive heart attack,
and joked about the doll, which I absconded with,
sprayed holy water on, and burned to ashes just in case.

Bob Boyd

In Louisiana where he lived, he drove around one night
like a madman in his old Honda trying to forget his ex

who despite being engaged to him and planning
on marrying him

left him for his friend who was going to be
his best man at their wedding.

He drove on highways and byways all over Louisiana,
but still couldn’t get her out of his mind.

The break up, the end of the engagement
and the marriage

were too big a heartache for him and
when the police raced after him for speeding

he lost control of his mind and became
even crazier and more reckless.

Miraculously, he escaped from the police,
and seemed to have vanished from this earth.

He was never found, but there’s a crying male ghost
that appears at the shores of Lake Pontchartrain,

and there might be an old Honda buried in
the water there.

Bob Boyd

A sinister little boy
dancing around
gravestones asks
visitors to stay and
play with him.

A woman in white
hovers above
the gravestones
but says nothing.

A man in dark
19th century
clothes named
Ephraim with dark
sockets in place
of eyes, said to
yell at women
and scare them
away.

What to make
of these ghosts
I cannot say.

But many claim
to have seen them.

And maybe these
spirits are real,
but the bigger
question is if
they are real,
why are they
still on earth
and not
elsewhere
in the afterlife?

Bob Boyd

I remember her last resigned gasp,
The awful rattling in her throat
The end of her, the end of everything,
Without her, I wanted to die too.
For ten years I’ve had endless laments
Never ceasing in my love for her,
Never loving another woman,
True to her as if she never died.
Now with a deadly stage 4 cancer
My diseased life coming to an end
I hear a voice, see a pretty face
My Love smiling and waiting for me.

Bob Boyd

Her beauty captivated him.
Never saw a woman as beautiful as her.

Her face and body perfect,
eyes heavenly blue.

But he failed to take the time to
know her beyond the superficial.

Fell in love with her immediately,
married her too soon.

Now he’s in a marriage from hell
with a woman impossible to live with

who is planning to ruin his reputation
and his life

when she tells all in court with some
lies thrown in and ruins him financially too.

Bob Boyd

Important in his day
a star among stars,
fame that would last
forever.

Hailed as the greatest
actor of all times. Never
any as famous as him.
Known all over the world
even in outer Mongolia.

Today nobody’s heard
of him, his fame washed
away in the tides of time.

Bob Boyd

It was as if evil had been implanted in him from birth,
and he never had a chance to be good.

Even his face had an evil look that only grew worse
as he became older.

When he was a child of six, he began kidnapped
dogs and cats in his neighborhood, torturing and killing them.

At age sixteen, he began his kills, and got away with them
until age 27, when the police finally were on to him.

When they appeared at his house, he resisted arrest
and had a shootout with the police

whereupon he walked into a storm bullets and committed
death by cop with his hellborn infamy destroyed forever.

Bob Boyd

25 and about finding the truth.
25 and about higher
states of consciousness.
25 and a full blown seeker,
I get initiated into a
meditation method
in a room in Cambridge, Mass
not far from Radcliffe
and Harvard U.

An elaborate ceremony,
an altar and incense burning,
the initiator a woman chanting.
I get a sacred Hindu mantra.
I begin to mentally repeat it

A minute later, I hear a
soft snapping sound in the
center of my forehead,
maybe where the third eye
is said to be, maybe not.

My consciousness expands
and its flooded with
indescribable bliss
beyond anything
I’d ever imagined.

I walk out of the
meditation room high and
feeling like a Hindu monk
in a flowing robe, feeling like
I’d come home, feeling like
I’d been a Hindu monk
in a former life.

Bob Boyd

A friend and I driving around in his father’s car, both of us sixteen with raging hormones.
A hot, voluptuous girl our age thumbs a ride. My friend gives her a lift.

She gets in the car in the front seat next to me, her perfume exhilarating. She rubs my leg and calls me chicken.

But I was unaffected, not even tempted to react to her challenge despite her beautiful face and voluptuous body.

She was sloppy drunk, and a woman drunk has always been a turn off to me.

Plus, it just wouldn’t have been right to take advantage of her in that vulnerable condition.

Though a troubled kid, I had some principles, and in some cases a solid sense of right and wrong.

But if I’d met her at a dance sober and looking as good as she did, I would have been enamored and wanting to get to know her.

Surprisingly, when we let her off at her destination, she thanked me for not taking advantage of her.

That was one of the few times I shined like a star in my wayward, wrong side of the tracks, troubled youth.

I remember it and write about it because of the rarity of me doing anything right and memorable when I was a teenage greaser, a loser and a rebel, though never a bully or in trouble with the Law.

Bob Boyd

As I became fascinating with dragons, I somehow got the idea of how cool it would look having a real life picture of a Celtic woman in a blue medieval dress hugging a large, subdued giant dragon.

I saw this as a reversal of the old legend of a princess imprisoned in a castle by an evil dragon that only a brave knight could save her from.

I saw it as a dragon imprisoned by her magical love and magnetic compassion.
And I liked the idea of that.

I feel there is probably more symbolism to that picture than I can imagine,
perhaps something like a liberating feminine symbol of a woman’s power.

Or maybe a deeper metaphysical meaning beyond my designing intention or comprehension.

Whether a simple or profound meaning, I love how great and realistic that picture looks.

Bob Boyd

I look outside my apartment
and see the leaves on the trees
like never before

and I marvel at how green the
reborn leaves have become
this month of April.

Before I was retired, I never
noticed these wonders of
nature. I was so consumed
with my job, I paid no
attention to them.

Now I see them as though
my senses have become
alive beyond belief,

as though I have new eyes
that have opened to nature’s
seasonal splendors with
greater clarity and sight.

And I see the beautiful blue of the sky
and the greening of the lush grass
that surrounds my apartment.

Now I appreciate the greening
of April like never before.

Bob Boyd

I’ve lived 80 years of life, have lived in many places,
many states and Europe and the Philippines.

I’ve had a reasonably full life with many adventures
and have no need for more earthly adventures.

I see death as the greatest adventure ever.

I see death as a shedding of earthly cares and
a temporary body with it’s vulnerabilities to
aging, disabilities and diseases that one is
rid of when newly born young and fresh
in the afterlife.

And I am in a position with no attachments,
so I can easily let go when death comes.

If I had a girlfriend or a wife, my heart would
break at even the thought of leaving her.
I would not want to let go unless we could
go together.

I’d fight to stay alive with every iota of my
being to stay with her and not leave her
behind while I ascended into what I see as
a greater, wonderous world.

But because I’m so accepting of dying,
and because I feel so incredibly good,
still working out, exercising daily,
as if I were nearly indestructible,
I’ll probably be here for many more years,
more than I want to be.

And as you can never say never, maybe
one day I’ll be blissfully anchored
to this world with a girlfriend or a wife
and unable to let go when death comes.

Or maybe like sometimes happens,
we’d go out together or each would
die within days of the other.

In the meantime, come Death
take me home to what I believe
is my true home.

And though I’m not a fundamentalist
Christian but a devout believer in Christ
in a non-churched mystical fashion,
maybe Jesus will meet me at the doorway
to death and take me to paradise.

Or maybe I’ll merge with the cosmos,
become post life enlightened and live
forever in the eternal bliss consciousness.

Whatever the outcome, I look forward to dying
though not in a suicidal sense.

Bob Boyd

don’t always make good romantic partners
one is content staying home most of the time
the other has to get out all of the time
though some seem to make it work
I read Dolly Parton and her husband did
God bless them I don’t know how
but Dolly must be an exceptional person
to stay faithful with all the temptations
she could have had as an entertainer
I have alway been mostly a homebody
though in my wild youth I was out all the time
when I had a romantic partner I preferred
to stay home most of the time and to
go out occasionally unlike some women
I’d been with who had to get out all the time
with a wife like that I was terribly lonely
and remember an old country song
isn’t it lonely together and eventually
I had to leave her even though she
surprisingly begged me to stay despite the
homebody social butterfly incompatibility.

bob boyd

Consider all these people who go missing
without a clue of what happened to them

except maybe their shoes the only thing
found with no traces, and even search and

rescue dogs can’t pick up a scent of them.

Supposedly their numbers are in the thousands
and no one knows what happened to them.

Not a trace of the vanishings and no logical
explanations for their disappearances.

Speculations vary: portals, aliens, Bigfoot,
Dogman, or something else supernatural
and unknown.

I’ve listened to cases where allegedly people
have experienced bizarre beings that appeared
to them via other dimensions.

For example, something quasi formless that
morphs into bizarre forms and beckons them
while everything gets quiet all around them,
or a form that emits a vibration that
vibrates everything around that a person,
even that person’s keys in his pocket.

As crazy as it sounds and may be, imagine if
beings from other dimensions were instantly
manifesting in this dimension and snatching
these people into those dimensions for
whatever reasons.

A chilling thought indeed. And, in my opinion,
as good a guess as any other explanation.

As for me, I’m open to the theory these
inexplicable 411 missing cases could be
kidnappings by aliens with the ability to
move with ease in and out of dimensions.

But, of course, that could be utter nonsense,
and nobody knows for sure the fate of the 411s.

Bob Boyd