Day: September 3, 2025

I swore I’d never use self service checkouts;
they put people out of work.
But I failed in my noble intentions.
Got tired of standing in lines.
Got hooked on the convenience.
Got seduced by the speed.
Out in minutes, occasionally seconds,
no waiting in long lines.
And sometimes there are no cashiers
and you only have the self service checkouts.

I even go to a grocery store a little further away
than one near me, the checkouts are less busy,
and they have more of them.
Thank God I’m retired because someday
a self service machine probably would have
put me out of work too.

Bob Boyd

Sometimes I wonder where they all have gone,
people who disappeared from my past.
People I knew in grade school, like the sweet
little girl, a classmate I used to walk home with
and felt the stirrings of infatuation with. Now I
wonder if I’d known her longer where that
infatuation might have gone. The Hell’s Angel
named Nicky who was a relative of a friend
of mine and offered me a hit of a drug in a club
before a while later he smashed a bat over
a bar patron’s head and with other bikers
blew out of the club and probably never
got arrested. My first love, Pat Curran,
a pretty blonde from New Jersey who
said she would marry me when we got older
only to cheat on me not long after that.
There are so many others, more than I
can count. I’m sure you have that many
people who have disappeared from
your life too.

Bob Boyd

The weather is so fickle here.
Yesterday it was as if fall
had arrived a little early.
I thought the weather was
going to give people a break.
Today it’s up to summer
temperatures again, 78 degrees.
I suspect as in the past the
heat will linger deeper into
this month, September.
Oh how I pine for the
cooler, invigorating weather.

Bob Boyd

Your time is running out
but you don’t want to
think about your upcoming
one way ticket departure
from this tenuous world

sometimes you feel like
you are here forever
except when you wake up
for brief moments and
ponder your impermanence

I don’t blame you one bit
I’ve been the same way
for much of my life

who wants to think of dying
who wants to go to the grave
who wants to think of such
dreadful, depressing things

when you would like to
live forever and die never
especially if everything is
going great in your life

Bob Boyd