Day: July 5, 2026

The separation is painful; her soldier husband is
somewhere on the front lines.

Every day is a lament, and she hasn’t heard from
him in weeks.

She sees flocks of birds returning now that it’s spring,
but still no correspondence from her husband.

In a dream she sees him bloodied and unconscious,
and when an officer knocks on her front door the next day,

before she opens the door, tears fall down her face, and
she knows her husband has died.

Bob Boyd

I’ve become excited about art and
the bios of male and female artists.
I never cared about art before,
but now I’m in love with it.
And even though I’m an old man,
I was thinking how fun and
educational it would be to have
an artist, hobbyist or professional,
as a girlfriend or a wife. And how
I’d love to see her paintings and
talk about art all the time with her.

Bob Boyd

The artist Henri Matisse had a nice, supportive wife.
She married him when he was near penniless.
She didn’t care about the money. She cared about
his awesome artistic ability and felt he should pursue it.
She stayed with him through lean times and even
opened up a hat shop to help with finances.
But many years later she left him; it’s rumored because
he was involved with another woman.
If that was the case, what a shame that he lost such
a good and supportive wife because of it.

Bob Boyd

When he first saw here, he was so blown away
by her looks that he told her he felt love at first sight for her.

She said, “But you don’t know me.”

And mercy me, she was so right. Six of her last boyfriends and husbands disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances.

He didn’t know this, so he went out with her anyway, and a year
later, he hadn’t disappeared or died.

But she had died. Supposedly she jumped out of a ten story window
while on her honeymoon with him.

Maybe it was a case of serial killers in love, a match made in hell,
and they both had the same plan, except his worked out well.

Bob Boyd

Billions of people on the planet.
If they have spirits when they die,
I wonder where in the afterlife
there will there be room enough
for billions of them and the trillions
of them already there.

Do you ever think about stuff like
that or don’t you care?

To speculate further, maybe there
is a set number, and that number
just gets repurposed as newbies
recycled back to this planet.

And if those spirits get good
enough and behave well enough,
maybe they get off the repurposed
cycle and kind of evaporate into
infinity. And as a reward, they
stay permanently blissed out.

Bob Boyd

Cornflower blue eyes
Golden blonde hair
Enchanting voice
Elegant and angelic
Beautiful teenage dream
Goddess at teenage dance
Accepted his offer to dance
Sweet sixteen playing
He fell in love
She did too
A long distance
Teenage romance
Her in Jersey
Him in Massachusetts
You Belong to me
Their song
September came
Heart aches when apart
Heaven when together
Summer love
Marriage one day
High school prom in Jersey
Something off
Teenage romance fading
Writing on the wall
Heart break coming
Cheated on him
Teenage love
Marriage plans
Both dead
Gone forever
A thousand tears

Bob Boyd

Through fires, smoke, and the stench of bombs, the moon was war-torn and blue.
Alone, dazed, shell-shocked, grieving, my heart was too.
My life destroyed, my mind numbed, my hopes shattered.

They bombed the hell out of my beautiful city and killed my Anastasia,
who bled to death in my arms in seconds, while I was helpless to help her.
My sweet angel, my love, who had accepted my proposal of marriage
before the bombs fell and turned our city and our love into rubble.
My world a nightmare without her, a godforsaken, war-torn hell.

Crazed with rage, I marched into battle to avenge my sweet angel Anastasia.
With nothing left and my life over, like an insane Viking berserker, I’d lost my fears and become like a crazed beast.
The enemy troops fear dying, but I don’t; a noble death will reunite me with Anastasia.

Dying is all I have left. I’m empty inside, marching through
this dystopian nightmare of corpses and dead dreams.
The cadence of a thousand determined boots marching summons
me to war under a blue moon that’s as broken as I am.
Bombs explode around me, soldiers and civilians screaming and dying.
I fight the battle raging and fearless, indifferent to the horrors,
like a bulletproof immortal protected by the gods of war.

The battle ends; we win; still alive, I collapse on the battleground,
the stench of gunpowder permeating the smoky air,
blood running in rivulets in the streets.
And I cry countless tears for my sweet angel, my love, my wife… Anastasia.

Bob Boyd