Category: Poems

I just remembered an event from my past
when I was often partying and drunk
a friend I knew introduced me to a woman
in a bar and we seemed to have simpatico
she gave me her phone number and I
thought maybe we’d go out on a date
but when I called the number the next
day it was a wrong number
pondering that event I think it was
for the best since she was deceptive
and even if it worked out we probabaly
would have broken up anyway
a heartache I wouldn’t have needed
and I’m not eating sour grapes

Bob Boyd

People fighting, women screaming,
it’s a wild weekend night in Sheffield, England
police all over the streets quelling the mayhem
one erratic man keeps taunting the police
shouts at them and asks them to arrest him
and he’s acting like he’s on an amphetamine
surprisingly he doesn’t get his wish
an inebriated woman yelling and restrained
by three police gets escorted into a police van
what a waste of her femininity
I remember when police vans were paddy wagons
and not as many women got drunk on their asses
a skinny guy with his shirt off is acting crazy
as if he wants to fight someone while a man
plays a mellow song with a guitar in the background
the skinny guy puts his shirt back on
later the police pin him against a wall and probably
arrest him and stuff him in the van too
I think he had too much to drink and got beer muscles
a crowd of men about to fight are separated
by other men before police rush in and quell the craziness
I’m glad I’m not in Sheffield tonight
it’s too out of control and two many crazies are in the streets
in must be a full moon in Sheffield
for such a wild weekend night of mayhem there
I’m glad I’m at my computer far away from it

Bob Boyd

I remember her briefly.
She came to work at
the same place I did.
She seemed nice.
She seemed normal.
Then a week later
she didn’t show up
for work, and I learned
she had killed herself.
I couldn’t believe it.
She didn’t seem as
if she was suicidal. I
don’t know how she
killed herself, and I
really didn’t want to
know, but so sad she
did it. So sad she died.
I hope she went to a
heavenly place where
she could be happy
and be healed.

Bob Boyd

Have you any idea why a guy would say a man
who died was a lucky bastard?

Of course it sounds contrary. How could someone
that died be a lucky bastard?

The answer is he had died himself, but temporarily,
and what he saw and experienced

made him want to stay dead forever in the place
of bliss and love that he was in.

So to him, someone who got there permanently
was a lucky bastard.

And I tend to believe he was right and that what
he said was true.

Bob Boyd

When I met with Mark, he said
he had an AI girlfriend. I thought
he was kidding until he took out
his cell phone and introducted
her to me. She sounded and
talked so much like a human
that I thought he was kidding.
After a while, I realized he was
serious, and that the voice was
an AI girlfriend.

I spent an hour talking to him
and her. After that I could see
what he saw in her, and I wished
him well. Surprised by his choice
a machine over a real woman,
I did a lot of thinking about it.
I concluded if an AI girlfriend
made him happy, why not.
That was six years ago, and
Mark is still happy and in love
with his AI girlfriend. And I have
to admit, he’s had better luck
with her than I have had with
real women.

Bob Boyd

As a kid, he fished all the time
and loved to catch fish.

But he didn’t fish out of necessity
for food. He fished merely for sport.

And instead of throwing the fish back
in the water, he just let them die.

Then when he was in his late teens
he had a dream where the hundreds

of fish he had caught and killed
appeared before him one by one.

He felt the searing pain and the agony
he had caused those fish.

The pain and agony were so real,
he felt like he was going to die too.

He woke up uncertain if he were
dead or living

and felt something like lifesaving
relief when he realized it was just a dream.

And he never fished again after that dream,
which to this day he feels was more than a dream.

Bob Boyd

I see this over and over. Couples fall in love,
but as time and new love passions pass,
the love often becomes bitter sweet. And
eventually the love is gone and the
couples part.

I’ve experienced this myself a number of
times. It’s as if after the euphoria of new
love passes, the hidden parts of the
loved one emerge.

Sometimes seemingly from dark corners
of their souls, like the woman who a year
after love had bloomed stole from me, and
I saw the dark, hidden parts in her, and she
had destroyed my love for her forever.

But that was only one of the countless often
bitter relationship refrains playing out every
day all over the world.

How I wish it wasn’t so.

Bob Boyd

He spies a lone butterfly
with splendid colors,
blues, oranges and purples.

He see it land on some violet
hibiscus flowers, and its wings
flutter as if delighted with its
find.

But then from under the flowers
two claws snatch the butterfly
into the chewing mandibles of
a praying mantis.

He’s shocked by the horror of it,
a beautiful, harmless insect
snatched out of this world.

And he wonders why the hell
does the world have to be
filled with so much carnage.

A world where beautiful
butterflies and beautiful people
are brutally taken out of it
every second, every minute,
every hour of every day.

Bob Boyd

He hears crows cawing outside his apartment.
He wonders what all that noise is about.
Do they just like to make a racket, or are they
discussing things like crow politics or the weather?
He being a little nuts gets an idea. He tapes the
caws of the crows and for weeks practices the
caws until he feels proficient in crow cawing.

The next time the crows appear in the trees
outside his apartment and begin their caws,
he steps out of his apartment and begins
cawing back at them. But he doesn’t get the
results he thought he would. The crows caw
louder and begin attacking him. He runs into
his apartment and the crows beat their wings
against his apartment windows for at least ten
minutes and, finally, fly away cawing madly.

He calls his veterinarian girlfriend and tells her
what happened. She says to him, “You have to
be careful with crow speak. If you caw wrong,
it sounds like you are swearing at the crows.
Thereafter he never tried to caw at the crows,
or even step out of his apartment when he
heard them cawing in the trees.

Bob Boyd

Bree was an all A’s student in high school,
participated in many extracurricular activities.

Got a scholarship from an ivy league college,
became brainwashed there against the US.

She joined radical groups, attended many
protests

became more and more radicalized and
got involved in a bombing plot.

And helped make a homemade bomb
to blow up a government building with.

On the way to the building in her car
with two others the bomb went off

accidentally and killed Bree and her
two accomplices.

Now all of her potential, all of what she
could have been

is buried in Glenview cemetery, and the former
all A’s high school student is gone forever.

Bob Boyd