Month: June 2025

When I was young and extremely optimistic,
I thought I could build muscle as long as I lived,
or at the least, maintain it.

Now from knowledge I know that as a young man
I was ignorant and naively optimistic.

Now that I’m an old man who has lost his
muscle mass, I know from experience that I was
mistaken.

Of course, I could take testosterone replacement
shots and maintain and maybe build some muscle
mass as an old man.

But I feel that there are risks that don’t make it
worth the weekly or biweekly testosterone shots.

So, zenlike, I have come to accept the muscle
wastage effects of aging and the inevitable
decline of one’s body.

Bob Boyd

When someone said, “I will love you till I die,”
I always felt that was too limited, like an
insufficient love.

Like as if death would end a love that should
be forever.

Like a halfhearted declaration of what should
have been a never ending love.

I was always an I will love you forever romantic
and felt limiting love to just this life was unromantic.

Now I think maybe I love you till I die proclamations
are more correct and realistic.

And I love you forevers might be unrealistic and only
wishful, given love might end with death.

Given lovers’ lives might end with death despite
contrary claims by people who have been briefly
dead but not entirely.

Given if as I believe life continues in the afterlife,
maybe romantic love is nonexistent there.

Of maybe we reincarnate and one love is lost in
the transition to another life and another love.

But if I ever fall in love again, though doubtful,
I’m sticking with I will love you forever.

Bob Boyd

Fish Tank Dream

Won a fish tank and fish in a dream.
Didn’t want the tank or the fish.
Have too many tanks and fish.
Had to accept the win in the dream.
I’m unsure why that was.
I fretted over the tank and the fish
I didn’t need or want.
Upon awakening from the dream,
I immediately had a solution.
Just give the tank and the fish away.

Bob Boyd

Dawn is beginning to illuminate the sky
outside my apartment window.
I hear a myriad of song bird melodies.
Their songs remind me of a melancholic
memory of what I learned recently.
Seventy percent of them will be brutally
killed by predators, taken out of the trees
and the skies forever, their songs sung
no more.

And what to me sounds melodious, to a
hovering predator sounds like food.
Small wonder song birds are always so
nervous and fly off when one is near
them.

It seems senseless and cruel that these
little birds singing songs in trees exist
as prey for predators. Be thankful you
didn’t come into this existence as a
songbird who has to live in constant fear
and most likely won’t live a full life.

Bob Boyd

I must stop watching YouTube videos about women
getting stopped and arrested for driving drunk on highways.
It’s like an addiction for me that has to run its course
that I keep watching, as if held captive by it.
It’s like there are numberless women driving drunk;
more than I ever would have imagined.
Now I’m seeing one who drives away from a female cop,
who stopped her for driving drunk with her car swerving
back and forth on the highway at night.
When stopped, she laughs in her car, gives the cop the finger,
and races away down the highway with the cop in pursuit,
the squad car’s siren blaring in the night.
Can you imagine anyone being that crazy even when
drunk to not care about the consequences of such
insane actions?
I have no doubt she’s going to jail in cuffs and, unless
she really is crazy and oblivious, realizing at some point
how much she screwed up as the charges are read to her
and she’s seeing her future in a prison cell.
All these women getting drunk and driving may be business
as usual to you.
To me it’s like the fall of the once better behaved of our
species when decades ago it was rare to see or hear about
ladies getting drunk and, worse, driving on highways that
way and hassling police who stop and arrest them.
I’ve even seen women screeching and kicking windows
in squad cars like psychos unleashed.
One could say in a way it’s entertaining, but it’s also sad
so many women have come to this, seemingly in
increasing numbers driving at risks to others and
to themselves.

Bob Boyd

I don’t remember her name.
I didn’t know her well.
I sat near her in a high school class.
I remember she was sweet and pretty.
She also seemed like a kind person.
One day I recall hearing a guy tell another
that he had her too, as if she were just
a whore and nothing more to be used
for sex by both of those scumbags.
No doubt they told others and sullied
her reputation in high school evermore.
How I hated those guys back then.
It was like a sacrilege to use that sweet
girl, dump her, and brag about it.
Worse, how heartbreaking and awful
it must have been for her to endure
being seen as just a body to be used
for sex and nothing more.

Bob Boyd

Saw a video of a woman who was being questioned for
being drunk and disorderly. She refused to show her ID
to the policeman. She called him an asshole, a piece of
shit and a cocksucker. For a while she was getting away
with her verbal abuse and noncompliance, but when she
tried to walk away, out came the handcuffs and she found
herself on the ground screaming and being cuffed and
arrested. And she kicked the cop giving herself more
charges and possibly a longer prison term.

Maybe in cases like this people are too drunk to realize
the seriousness of their situations, or they get those beer
muscles and think they’re invincible and untouchable.
But, as to be expected, things always end badly for them
when they’re cuffed, stuck in the police cruiser, and on
their way to the police station for a booking, criminal
charges, and penalties administered in a court of law.

Bob Boyd

No safety nets. Poverty everywhere.
Buildings that wouldn’t pass code in
first world countries. Less chances
to get ahead. Fewer rise up out of
caste-like social structures that in
first world countries are mostly
nonexistant. Legitimate beggars in
the streets. Crime might be higher
out of poverty and no other way to
survive. Family support tighter out of
necessity for surviving the dismal
futures financially and emotionally.
Family members may have to work
at jobs in other countries to send
money home due to lack of jobs in
their impoverished countries.
Nobody gets welfare and social
service benefits. They’re on their own.

Bob Boyd

God how I love easy going people.
No nonsense. No jerk behavior.
Just enjoyable people who never
make any trouble, and are nice to
be around.

As opposed to people who seem
wired to be jerks and annoying. I
have to wonder if jerks are really
aware of how annoying they are,
and if there is anyway to
rehabilitate their offensive behavior.
Somehow I doubt it.

As opposed to people who act as
if they are superior to everyone
because of God given gifts, like
high intelligence, beauty, or how
much money thay have. I find
people like that insufferable.

Imagine if the world were full of
easy going people. We’d probably
have no wars, no murders, no
fights, fewer tensions, less
arguments, and life would be
more peaceful than it is now.

Bob Boyd

Some people want to live to 100 or longer.
Most of them have no idea what that would entail.
Odds are their minds would be shot with a dementia.
Their bodies would be barely mobile, if at all.
Most likely, they’d look like death walking unless
they were one of the miraculous exceptions.
But living to 100 just wouldn’t be worth the risks.
I write this after having worked with the elderly
for over twenty years and seen the effects of aging.
Even the 90s pose risks of dementia and the loss
of one’s ability to take care of one’s self.
Nursing homes are in the futures of many at 90
unless miraculously they’ve been blessed.
As for me, 85 is my desired expiration date before
I could lose my mind, mobility and independence.
But because I desire what I see as an ideal age
for my departure from this impermanent life,
I’ll probably live longer than I want to and be at
risk of dementia and all manner of debilitations.

Bob Boyd

Been watching YouTube videos of women
arrested for drunk driving and for creating
all manner of disturbances in public.
At first it was surprising to see legions of
mostly young ladies drunk and disorderly.
The novelty was an addictive watch for
a while, unseeming, shocking, surprising.
Then it was sad to see so many lovely
young women getting themselves in so
much unnecessary trouble with the police.
It was worse when they cried and were in
tearful despair, though of their own making.
Still tragic to see their lives had taken such
drastic turns for whatever unclear reasons.
To me, they were a reminder of the many
sad stories in this often disheartening life.
It is my hope that one day all of us will be
in an after world beyond all the sorrows.

Bob Boyd

Many people have floated in and out
of my life though these 80 years.
Some unforgettable for all of my life.
Most hardly memorable. Some I’ve
forgotten, strangers for a moment.
So many I cannot add them all up.
Some in Europe. Some in the
Philippines. Most in parts of the US.
A constant stream of people. Most
cordial. A few I wish I’d never met.
I wonder if when I die, the river of
people will start flowing again. if so
will all the people/spirits be stellar
or will they be the same good and
not so good – unchanged in death.

Bob Boyd

Upon being arrested
a woman said she was
too hot for jail.

In theory she was right.
She did look too hot to
be confined.

Her looks probably granted
her privileges elsewhere that
less hot women didn’t have.

But, sadly, her actions
cancelled out any privileges
her hotness could have afforded
her.

Sadder still is a woman with her
advantageous looks got herself
into a bad situation

and thought her looks protected
her from the penalties that apply
equally to us all.

Bob Boyd

Paranoid about the rising crime,
perhaps justifiable so,
she bought a handgun.

By mistake, she cut a guy off in
traffic and felt it was his fault
that they almost had an accident.

She jammed on her brakes, got enraged,
started screaming and swearing at the guy
who at first remained calm.

But after her long tirade of swears
and insults, the guy got pissed and
got out of his car to confront her.

To shut him up, she pulled out her gun.
But, enraged, he kept walking toward
her car to tell her off.

She panicked and shot him, blowing her
chances for a self defense plea after
she was arrested.

When she was convicted of murder
in court and sent to jail, she bemoaned
she let anger control her

and took a life because of it. And with
a long prison sentence, lost her freedom
for most of her life.

Bob Boyd

Songbirds, such as sparrows, don’t have
much of a chance to live long lives.
Predators kill 70 percent of them
before they reach old age.

How I hated to read about that.
Sweet singing little birds’ lives snuffed out,
always having to worry about being killed.
Awful way to have to live.

How I hate that part of nature.
How I wonder why a Creator set things
up like that.

If I didn’t believe in a benevolent God
it would be easier to accept the tragic
deaths of little singing birds.
Though I wouldn’t like it, I’d reason
that’s just the way it is.

But it saddens me that those little birds
don’t have much of a chance in life.
And always have to be fearful that
a lurking predator is going to end
them forever.

And I hate how there is so much
carnage in nature.

Bob Boyd

Once I saw an actress on a TV show
who said she wasn’t a joiner.
I identified with that. I’m not a joiner
either, never been a follower either.
I was always okay functioning as a
team in a work environment, but
to me that wasn’t being a follower.
In some ways not being a follower
or a joiner may be a weakness. In
other ways it may be a strength.

Bob Boyd

I’ve noticed some people thrive
on trouble.
They don’t seem happy unless
they have some chaos in their
lives.
They go out of their way to
stir things up.

I think they’re wired that way
from birth instead of being
born like normal people who
avoid trouble and chaos.

Just as a psychopath can’t
change his or her ways, it
might be these troublemakers
are the same, fated with
irksome destinies beyond
their control.

Bob Boyd

she was born unable to see or hear
and had various health problems.
died at age six painfully.
why had this innocent child had to
endure such a horrible fate
when others have comparably
normal, full lives?
perhaps the fates are crueler
to some and kinder to others.
maybe a God has nothing to do
with these human conditions
and it’s all just random events
whether one is lucky or unlucky
in this transient life.

bob boyd

her beauty was beyond compare
unlike any ever seen before
perfection in the female form
yet like a rose’s thorns
she has thorns within
used men like throwaway toys
drained them of their money
left them for men with more
shot one in a drunken rage
now she’s a caged beauty
withering away in prison

bob boyd

some people follow sports teams
it’s a big part of their lives
i’m not one of them
following sports teams has
never had any appeal to me
in a way i wish i could be
a sports fan
it provides a lot of excitement
in one’s life
and there’s always a game
to look forward to watching
with all the suspense and thrills
a harmless and fun addition
to one’s earthly life
perhaps therapeutic too
and something else to do
in a world where boredom
often lurks in a person’s life

bob boyd