Month: April 2025

I can’t believe people who go through horrific things in this life were bad people in past lives who are getting their due.

I think if karma is factual it’s more complicated than that. I think there is randomness in the equation.

For example, a while back in the news it was reported a woman in New York was walking through a park and a large tree branch fell on her and killed her.

I see that as randomness and not some karmic payback.

Personally, I don’t like the idea of karma. I don’t like the idea of assigning a person’s bad behavior in a former life to bad karma when they are going through something horrendous like a terminal brain cancer or the loss of their legs.

I do believe in action and reaction in this life. A person commits a crime and usually imprisonment is the reaction, but in my belief that’s not past life or this life bad karma.

But karma is based on belief and speculation, and I choose to believe there’s more than karma involved when it comes to a person’s suffering.

Bob Boyd

Last night I dreamed about bombs
beginning to fall, and braced for
the impending explosions,
but woke up before the bombs fell.

Though a dream, the feeling was
as real as if I were in a country
where bombs were always
about to fall.

I woke up relieved the falling bombs
were only a dream, and wondered
what that dream was really about

or what I’d seen or read about
during the day that might have
manifested in that dream.

Now I’m imagining how horrifying it
must be to live, or have lived, in a country
where bombs are always about to fall.

Bob Boyd

Sitting at my computer in front of a window
with the moonlight coming through,
I find myself thinking about you.

And I’m remembering how nice it was
being with you.

And what a wonderful part of my life those
seven years were.

Though our love ended when you got sick
and didn’t want to burden me

and left despite my forever vow to be there
always for you, I’m okay with our lost love now.

And though alone and over twenty years older,
I’ll go to my grave remembering you
and how much you meant to me.

Bob Boyd

A few weeks ago, I entered a donut shop
called Duck Donuts.

Though I rarely eat donuts and unlike
Häagen-Dazs ice cream, I have no
addiction to them.

But I was intrigued by the name, perhaps
partly because I like ducks.

I tried a plain donut to sort of test the taste
in its purer form instead of a donut with
all the bits and extras.

The donut was the best plain donut I ever
tasted, and I wondered if any other
donut shops had plain donuts as good
or better.

I like to experiment, so my plan was to
try plain donuts in other donut shops in
Greensboro, NC where I live.

I did a search with Yelp and saw donut shops
like Dunkin Donuts, Krispy Kreme, and Donut World

To my surprise, days later I got an email from
Yelp, “How was Donut World?”

Now I know Yelp isn’t psychic, so clearly it was
stalking me, but it’s stalking was faulty as
a fake psychic’s guesses, and I’ve not been
to Donut World so far.

Bob Boyd

I’m reading a poetry book beginning at the
end of it. but, trust me, I’m not a half wit.

What! You say that sounds odd. I have to agree,
trying to be an objective critic of me.

But hear me out and you might see the method
in my oddness is far from insanity.

I began by reading the book from the start,
but felt the poems had no heart.

So to in an attempt to put my dislike in the past,
I thought maybe the best were saved for last.

Now maybe that was crazy and my thinking was
hazy.

But like a crescendo, and I write this with no
innuendo, the poems at the ending were
better, more heartrending and mind bending.

Bob Boyd

It was thought in the west dragons were dangerous beasts
that had to be killed because of their fire-breathing threat.

But the dragons were really gentle creatures reacting to
the attacks upon them to protect themselves

as even any human would do if defamed and attacked
mercilessly.

Four wise and tendered-hearted women didn’t believe
the fake news and the hype about dragons.

They approached them without the preconceived notions,
the news and the hype had poisoned so many others with.

They approached them with respectful gentleness and disarming kindness,
and they tamed the dragons with love instead of subduing them with the sword.

Bob Boyd

I’ve never understood how a man could
rape a woman.

I’ve never understood how a man could
violate a woman despite her protests,
pleadings, cries and screams.

You have to be a soulless fucking monster,
evil and heartless as a goddamned demon
to attack and harm a woman like that,

to inflict emotional scars on her that I
imagine last for her entire life.

In my opinion, a rape is in a way worse than
a murder.

When murdered, you don’t have to live
with the anguish for the rest of your life.

And were I able to change the laws, I’d
make the penalty for rape as severe as
that of murder.

Bob Boyd

There might be life on a planet called K2-18b,
a planet that orbits a star 120 light-years away,
astronomers say.

A molecule on earth produced by living organisms like
marine algae was detected in the planets atmosphere,
astronomers have found.

Which led to the speculation that the planet might be
“covered with a warm ocean, brimming with life.”

Imagine if it were brimming with aliens unlike any
lifeforms we could ever have imagined.

A revelation I’ve been waiting for, proof of a planet
out of the estimated 50 sextillion planets that hosts
life less or more advanced than life on earth.

If that day comes in my lifetime, my hope is that life will be more like benevolent ETs than hostile Klingons.

Bob Boyd

First it was Vanilla Swiss Almond.
I went nuts about it! Delicious!

Sometimes I liked Chocolate Peanut Butter,
a smooth buttery nuttery spread of
chocolate and peanut butter. Scrumptious!

Now I’ve found a new Häagen-Dazs love,
Coffee Chip, which contains two of my
favorite things, coffee and chocolate. Heavenly!

And I’m thinking about asking God if there’s
a heaven and I get a reprieve to get in
it – to let me eat Häagen-Dazs Coffee Chip
as my eternal staple there. Selah!

Bob Boyd

I had a country girlfriend in NC, and she kind of
introduced C&W music to me.

Though I didn’t like it before her, I did appreciate
the stories in some of the songs and liked a few of
them, like one about not skating in a buffalo herd,
sound advice.

After that girlfriend who stole money from me and
was writing love letters to a married man while
with me and done me wrong.

The relationship kind of ended like a C&W song,
except I didn’t drink and couldn’t cry in my beer,
and I didn’t sing about her cheating heart.

But I did like Country Music after that, and really
appreciated how well written some of the lyrics are,
and my mama never raised me up to be a cowboy.

Bob Boyd

I don’t know why, but that part of a song lyric, Ex’s in Texas always sounded good to me.

I’ve been to Texas, San Antonio, Amarillo, and Dallas.
I liked Dallas the best. Maybe because I wasn’t in the
Air Force there like in the other two cities.

I was in my thirties in Dallas, and I remember that the
drivers drove like cowboys there, and it took me a while
to get used to it, but I liked that fast pace driving when I did.

I really liked Dallas. It seemed to have everything one would want. I remember when I was there hearing on the news about high school suicides in Plano, Texas. I just googled it, and it was in 1983. Sad sometimes young people take their lives when they’ve just begun to live.

I never had any ex’s in Texas. Not even a girlfriend there, but forget about San Antonio and Amarillo, military bases with basically no women on them then, and San Antonio was a basic training stint. Amarillo wasn’t much different, and the townies hated us there anyway.

Once a young guy in a car with his girlfriend stopped next to me on a street in downtown Amarillo, and his girlfriend had her dress intentionally pulled high up exposing her alluring legs.

The guy asked me if I wanted to go for a ride hoping his girlfriend’s nice legs would lure me into his car thinking that maybe I’d get lucky, and he could drive me to where his buddies were waiting to beat the shit out of me.

But although his girlfriend’s legs were appealing, and she had a pretty face, I wasn’t dumb enough to take the bait, and what kind of POS guy would use his girlfriend like that and what kind of POS girlfriend would be a part of that. But I have to admit, she did have nice legs.

And townies in Amarillo were known for trying to beat up military guys, and didn’t like that their city was a military one.

I wasn’t in Dallas long enough to really establish any relationships with any women that might have been girlfriends or wives, and I didn’t go to bars, so I had zero luck of having any Ex’s in Texas, but I always liked the song.

Bob Boyd

Spring is supposed to be here
but 42° seems a bit NC wintry to me.
It’s been this cold for over a week.
C’mon weather, give me a break.
Give me some warm relief, and
do what you’re supposed to do.
Instead of showering me with
April showers, showering me
with some warm weather, at
least 68°, but I’d probably
settle for 60°. Show me some
love and bring on the heat.

Bob Boyd

In 1982 Russian sailors taking diving training in Baikal Lake, Siberia took a dive of 164 feet, and 3 humanoid creatures about 9 feet in height floated up toward them.

The creatures had silver silhouettes and transparent spheres on their heads shaped like open umbrellas.

The creatures and the Russian divers stared at each other until the creatures descended back into the depths.

The sailors surfaced and told their commander what had happened and were instructed to catch one of the humanoids so it could be examined.

Seven divers dived back into the lake with snares and wires to catch one of the humanoids with.

The humanoids rose from the murky depths when they saw the divers, and one of the divers tried to catch one.

The attempt failed, and the humanoids unleashed high powered sonar waves that tossed the Russian divers back up to the surface.

The divers, having surfaced too fast, developed decompression sickness, and three of them died from it.

As to whether the humanoids were aliens, no one knows, but if this account is true, I suspect they were.

Bob Boyd

Six fathers and one widow arrested on Ash Wednesday 1519 in Coventry, England.
The charge, teaching their children the Lord’s Prayer in English.

Learning and saying the Lord’s Prayer back then in any language other than Latin was illegal. The punishment was a fiery death on the stake.

The widow was set free, maybe because she was a widow with no husband to help raise her children.

But, when she was escorted home by a bishop, he found a document in her sleeve containing The Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Articles of Faith, and she was arrested again and imprisoned.

The seven were condemned to death. They were tied to three stakes and burned until dead in a place called The Little Park April 4th, 1519:

Master Archer, Thomas Bond, Master Hawkins, Robert Hockett, Thomas Landial, Master Wigham, Mistress Smith.

Bob Boyd

You see her in a hotel room
You freak out
Your body freezes
Goose bumps rise
You’re filled with dread
But Amanda isn’t there
She’s not conscious
And she cannot interact
She’s just an imprint
A loop that
Plays a moment
Over and over
She died from
A dramatic event
And Amanda
Moved on
March of 1966

Bob Boyd

She said what about that poem you wrote about reading a bird’s mind?
I said, I’m a jester at times, kidding about things I don’t believe in.
But what about your spiritual experiences and the kundalini energy in you, she said?
I said, those aren’t psychic powers, just natural manifestations in one’s spiritual life.
She cited people with alleged psychic powers she’d read about.
I said don’t believe what you’ve read. They’ve all been debunked.
I’d like there to be an abundance of psychic powers … if
they could be used for the good of humankind and to better the world.
But I just don’t believe anyone has bona fide paranormal powers.

Bob Boyd

She started sensing
spirits in her house.
Sometimes following her.
Sometimes touching her.
She began seeing the spirits
and her plants started to die
until it was discovered she
was being poisoned by
a carbon dioxide leak in
her furnace that when
fixed the spirits ceased
and her plants came back
to life.

Bob Boyd

She was told she had terminal cancer, a year to live
and said the cancer treatments made her lustful.
She divorced her husband of ten years and spent her
final days sleeping with as many men as she could.
I never understood her thinking. Many would be
acting better in this life hoping for a better afterlife.
Perhaps she was an atheist and wanted to get in
as much sex and pleasure as she could before
she passed on into a bleak and empty nothingness.

Bob Boyd

She wasn’t born into the money and the advantages it offered.
Acquiring material things meant little to her.
She didn’t need expensive clothes and an exorbitant lifestyle.
With those things she wasn’t consumed.
She enjoyed simple things and simple pleasures.
She wasn’t obsessed with always seeking more money and possessions.
She disdained the extravagant life. She lived for her art and for love.
And though she never made much money with her art and died
an unknown artist, she had a better richer life than those
who were trapped on the treadmill of striving for money and material things.

Bob Boyd

The night was dark
the woods were
unnaturally quiet
I knew my love
was coming for me.

I wanted and
didn’t want this
night because of
the price I had
to pay.

I heard her howls
coming closer
and closer, and
my heart beat
faster and faster
as I began to
really think about
the cost and
could I go through
with it, the
sacrifice I’d have
to make.

But when I saw
her coming to
me out of the
darkness, all my
reservations melted
at the sight of her.

She howled at me
lovingly, and I
steadied my breath
pulled out my
pistol and shot
three silver
bullets into her
and almost shot
myself to death
afterwards feeling
like I couldn’t
live with what
I had done.

Though I wanted her,
though I needed her,
though I loved her,
I just couldn’t
let her go on
killing people,
especially
after that
10-year-old girl
she slaughtered.

I stood with my
pistol smoking,
tears falling,
and I knew I’d
have to turn
myself in
to the police
and confess
to killing
my wife and
spend the rest of
my life in prison
because nobody
would ever
believe my wife,
an esteemed doctor,
could in any way
be a mythical monster.

But then I decided
to tell the truth
and be thought
insane, so I could
be put in a hospital
for the insane
instead of the
insane conditions
of a prison.

Bob Boyd