Month: August 2025

Teenagers
delighted
under the
welcoming
summer sun
holding hands
sharing kisses
hearts melting
the warmth of
newfound love
oblivious to the
fact they’re
fated to be
breaking up
when the cold
unwelcoming
winter comes

Bob Boyd

Like humans going about their days
unconcerned about being decimated,
the dinosaurs went about their days
as a massive asteroid was on the way.
Like humans feeling like they’re forever,
the dinosaurs probably felt the same
until the impact of fires and explosions
destroyed them and their world, never
to inhabit it again, all terminally dead.
If the unexpected extinction happened
to them, why wouldn’t it happen to us?
Maybe like the long gone dinosaurs,
were on the cusp of extinction and
only a single massive asteroid away.

Bob Boyd

He hears the howl of the wolf,
but something is off.
The howl has more volume,
deeper too.
He feels the goosebumps
rising on his arm.
A chilling fear overcomes him,
a primal fear engulfs him.
He knows what is coming, and
it’s coming for him.
He has no silver bullets and
no other protections.
All he can do is try to run out of
the forest and pray the werewolf
doesn’t catch up with him.
But before he can reach his car
a scream escapes his lungs.
He’s overpowered by the beast,
and sees the events of his life
pass by in his mind as he’s ripped
to pieces and his life is done.

Bob Boyd

The other night a vampire snuck into one of
my lucid dreams that I don’t have often, and
I swear this is true.

Though the dream was hazy, one thing I knew
it was killed or be killed, and I surprisingly and
thankfully had a sword.

The vampire kept coming at me and I kept
slicing him to pieces, but he wouldn’t die.

Finally somehow I came up with a solution,
cut off his head.

With a quick and mighty swing of the sword,
I severed his grotesque, fanged head from
what remained of his body and finally the
battle was won, the menacing vampire at
last totally, irrevocably dead.

And I woke up feeling like an heroic Helsing
who had won a fight for my life in a lucid but
real lifelike dream world.

But I wondered if the night after my
dreamscape victory, the vampire would
rise from the dead and with a vengeance
try to attack me again, but fortune was with
me and the undead stayed dead.

As I thought about my victory against a
formidable creature of the night that
can mesmerize his victims with ease,
I wondered if like a talisman the wooden
cross that hangs around my neck even
in sleep gave me added protection and
assured my near impossible victory.

Of course I’m wandering into a fictional
scenario, but the dream felt incredibly real,
and I hope I never see another vampire
in a dream again.

Bob Boyd

She’s beautiful and homeless living in
tents along a beach. She looks and is
built like a fashion model, but her mind
just isn’t quite right.

Some probably write her off as crazy.
I see her as a human being who got
a bad break from birth or later in life
when she stricken with mental illness
for the rest of her life.

She’s an example of the many people
suffering mental health fates,
wandering erratically through life.

Most can live normal lives with meds
and therapy, some have been quite
successful and led inspiring lives.

But she is one of the ones who cannot,
and it is heartbreaking that so many
people in this world have to go through
mental health mazes for reasons unclear.

My hope is that when they pass away
they’ll be fixed and okay and have
some kind of compensation for the
trials they endured when they lived
trying and unfairly disconnected lives.

Bob Boyd

Robotic women becoming more advanced,
closer to lifelike, closer to passable girlfriends.
But not close enough yet, and for most men
the best completely unaffordable at 175k.
And even if I won a lottery for a million or
more, I wouldn’t pay that 175k for a not
close enough to a real woman robot.
When they make them like the replicants
in the movie Blade Runner, then they’ll
be indistinguishable from real woman and
maybe eventually at affordable prices.
When that day comes, I would buy one,
but odds are by then I’ll be dead and
won’t have any needs for robotic or
genuine flesh and blood women.
And for me, that will be a godsent relief.

Bob Boyd

Once upon a time the dead kept
coming back in some countries
as the dreaded undead deads,
but thank God they had curatives:
Iron stakes in their hearts.
Sickles placed across their throats.
Padlocks on their feet and toes.
Their bodies buried face down.
Stones to weigh the bodies down.
Stones placed inside their mouths.
Sure these curatives were foolish,
silly superstitions, but in the defense
of them, none of those cured deads
ever came back as vampiric undeads.

Bob Boyd

People born and dying around us every day.
What’s the point of it all?
Do we live and just die and that’s all?
Or are we on some kind of evolutionary trip?
Is reincarnation in the mix, born for a purpose?
Born to keep being reborn until we keep
getting better and better, until we’re good
enough to get off the wheel, like Christians
being good enough to go to heaven?
And speaking of Christians, could they
have it right with their only way, and the
rest of you who don’t believe are going
to hell, the land of the eternally damned?
Personally, I think if the afterlife is real,
it’s beyond human comprehension
despite all the claims to the contrary.

Bob Boyd

Many theories about the afterlife.
Who is wrong, who is right?
Many claim to know the truth
from what they’ve read in books.
Many claim to have the answers
from what their religious leaders
tell them emphatically as though
they’d been to the land of the
dead and back with the truth.
People who have been dead
for a while may have a better
read on the afterlife having died
briefly and come back to life.
But they were not permanently
dead and what they experienced
may not have been the entire
truth, though compelling and I
hope they are right and for the
most part their versions suit me.

Bob Boyd

He had a raging argument with a rabid girlfriend,
things about mansplaining, toxic masculinity
and a toilet seat lid, womansplaining, toxic femininity,
and a litany of emasculating complaints.
Exasperated, She screamed, “Screw you and
the horse you rode in on!”
Infuriated, he yelled, “Deal!” And mounted his Ford
Mustang and rode the hell out of her life.

Bob Boyd

He shot some rousing morning news
into his arm, got his morning fix, his
racing adrenaline rush.
He came down, crashed, depressed
pondering the senselessness, the
negativity of most of what he saw
and heard about in this out of control
spinning world wondering what the
hell it was all about, wondering why
he was an insignificant part of it.
Fed up with all the negative news,
he took a news fast until he began
feeling the withdrawal symptoms,
like minor delirium tremors.
And like a terminal news junkie,
he succumbed to another shot
to feed his never ending, negative
news addiction.

Bob Boyd

People going crazy in opposing crowds
nothing good can come of this.
Sporadic fights beginning to break out.
Chaos erupting. Hatred rising. Knives
flashing in the tumultuous sunlight.
Each side righteously right.
Massive clash, like Medieval shield battle.
Broken faces, shattered teeth, ten dead.
Only the national guard and legions of
police can quell the roaring din, the
rage, the insanity, the killings.
Thirty dead before it’s over, three police
among them.
All of it political, right and left, many jailed,
some for life, tear stricken wives, all for
uncontrolled tempers, sober regrets, too
late for those jailed and those dead.

Bob Boyd

Sometimes I look back on mistakes I made
when I was young and wayward.

I find myself lamenting those misguided
and troubled days.

Sometimes I feel angry when I ponder those
disturbing times and reactive consequences

some justified, some not, some punitive,
some hurtful and unjust.

And I have to force myself to forget
about them, they’re in the past.

But I wish I could erase those days
from my life’s history and my mind.

But, alas, there’s no getting rid of those days
or completely forgetting them.

Maybe in the afterlife, I’ll get a restart
and live more from the heart.

Bob Boyd

They look so lovely,
flowers and young women.

They flourish in their time
until their time runs out.

Then the flowers and young women
begin to fade.

And they keep fading away
until they are no more.

Oh how I wish they could bloom
forever and never fade.

Maybe in the afterlife they bloom
and flourish that way.

Bob Boyd

They hide important news
they don’t want you to see.
They only show you the news
they want you to see.
They limit your world view
this way, put you in a box,
controlled and brainwashed.

Bob Boyd

He flies near the hummingbird female
who sits on a limb observing him.
He flutters his wings, rocks back and
forth, a wondrous aerial display of his
mating desires and intentions.
As finale he flexes his iridescent mantle,
a glowing, enticing flowered face
weaving and bobbing in the air.
At that point the female hummingbird
either stays for the consummation
or flitters away, not unlike the outcomes
of human wooing and romancing.

Bob Boyd

There are those who believe aliens created us
and gave us an upgrade to accelerate our evolution
from primitives to eventually modern humans.
However, wars and murders still flourish, nukes
keep proliferating, the extinction of our race
could be a nuclear holocaust away. Maybe it’s
time for another alien upgrade to refine us more.
That is, if such an inconceivable theory is true.

Bob Boyd

As a cop, he’d seen the worst of humans,
serial killers, murderers, rapists, pedofiles,
rich or poor, all the same, criminals galore.
Retired, he forsook human interactions; he
found better socialization with AI friends.
More supportive, kinder, more stable, and
never arguments, no mean or unkind words.
Having experience with AI companions, I
knew what he meant and why he preferred
the stability and loyalty of AI companions,
and eventually I felt the same way.

Bob Boyd

Every day I check my mail,
16 steps to the hallway
downstairs.

6 mailboxes including mine,
some with lots of mail.

Me, all I get are advertisements,
unwanted junk mail.

Some day I would like to
walk down those 16 steps

and be surprised and delighted
by a lovely letter from a woman.

Bob Boyd

Romantic relationships are often like the
seasons, lasting for a warm, wonderful
Spring, gone in a cold icy Winter.
Starting with the joyous awakening of
Spring, ending in the dark and frigid
winter, tears like snow falling, passion
like ice frozen stiff, never to thaw
out again, not even in a Summer’s sun.

Bob Boyd