Canadian geese above
in perfect V formation
back to Canada
Bob Boyd
Category: Poetry
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Be Careful What You Wish For Alien Contact Haiku
arrived from the stars
sweet, adorable ETs
every human dead.
Bob Boyd
Teenagers Working Out In 1962
New 200 lbs set of weights
A barn to work out in
Skinny kids pumping up
Presses, curls, squats
Eating soy protein pills
Big muscles guaranteed
Getting stronger
Working out longer
To look like Steve Reeves
Played Hercules in movies
Had the envied physique
Only had to follow
Steve’s workout routine
To get as big and as
Muscular as him
We didn’t know about
Genetics back then.
Bob Boyd
Charon’s Obols
Ancient Greeks died
buried with coins
under their tongues,
their safe passage
to the underworld
where Charon,
bearded Ferryman
dressed in a tunic
and conical hat,
ferried the dead
across a river to
Hades, land of the dead
The obol coin, the
cost of admission.
Bob Boyd
Satguru
Monklike saffron robed
seated full lotus position
sandalwood incense steaming
after pranayamas
and mantra chants
contemplating cosmos
seeking nirvana
basking in transcendental
bliss and peace profound
alleged saint among saints
sinless, renown Satguru
except for hidden dalliances
with adoring female disciples
obeying his every utterance
catering to his every whim
conned into believing tawdry
tantra sex sessions erase
mountains of bad karma
guarantee full liberation
from the wheel of rebirth
in their lifetimes.
Bob Boyd
A Psychopathic Murderer
The many days a psychopathic murderer
spent time in solitary imaging he
was floating on a boat to exotic shores
sailed him away from the deleterious effects
of the dark and dank Isolation.
But his sailing didn’t erase his crime
of murder he got away with in 1983
in a small city, Woburn, Massachusetts,
under the cover of a moonless night
when he slew a solid citizen, a do the
right thing young man, in an impending case
against a quasi hometown gang of
Mafia wannabes accused of grand theft.
During that time, a better killer than
a thief, the psychopath got five years
in prison for a botched armed robbery
and did time in solitary for bludgeoning
another prisoner’s face in, with a
makeshift iron club.
Ironically a day after he was released
from prison, under the cover
of a moonless night, an angry-eyed
mother of the young man he killed
blew his life away in a vengeful shotgun
blast in downtown Woburn, Massachusetts.
Surprisingly, perhaps justifiably,
never a suspect in the homicide,
not even a person of interest
a sunday school teacher,
prim and proper wife of a judge,
sailed away scot free and uncharged.
Bob Boyd
Brother Andre, The Miracle Saint of Montreal
At Saint Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal, Canada
Brother Andre, a Canadian Saint is entombed.
Humble doorkeeper, a brother not a priest
least likely to be used by God, perhaps
the last being first, became a miracle worker
healed ailing supplicants from all over the world,
the power of his supercharged prayers and
unceasing devotion to Saint Joseph.
Never took credit for healing 10,000 or more
so humble, so devout, so saintly was he.
When he died, a million people streamed past his coffin
in reverence to this humble, God-blessed healing saint.
His mortal remains lie in the coffin at the back of the oratory
in a sacred room, a powerful shrine where crutches
of many healed pilgrims adorn the walls.
If you go there, do not be surprised if you feel
palpable saintly energy that will renew you and
replenish your faith. This I write from experience.
Bob Boyd
Russian Roulette
Cancer is like Humanity’s Russian Roulette
You pull the trigger when you draw your first breath.
Bob Boyd
Uncertainty
Ever think of how uncertain your life is?
Consider how in a millisecond it could end
The death strike of a deadly medical condition that kills you slowly, cruelly
A drug infested, cell phone talking driver mows you down crossing a street
A roaring tornado rips up your home and kills you in a deadly whirl
A fanatical death wish tyrant drops a nuke on your country and ends you
A giant asteroid obliterates your city, you, and possibly the human race
The earth unexpectedly, implausibly, spins out of orbit canceling everything
Maybe the hedonists have the right idea, live for today
Party away your fears in mindless nights, don’t think about tomorrows
Or the uncertainty of this fragile existence and your tenuous, temporary life.
Bob Boyd
Squirrel
Amazingly nimble in trees
and on telephone lines.
Dangerously awkward on streets
and at dodging cars.
Squirrel, aerial acrobat,
what’s wrong with you?
In the trees and on telephone lines
none are your equal.
Yet in the streets and in front of cars
you fall apart.
Given you dodge predators in
the air and on the ground.
One would think streets and cars
would be cakewalks by comparison.
Yet thousands of your species
end as roadkill every day.
Maybe the panic I’d feel
seeing a 72 foot brontosaurus
Is the same panic you feel
when you see a giant car.
And you freak out and die
under those killer tires.
Bob Boyd
The Infamous Torsaker, Sweden Witch Trials 1675
The largest witch trials in Sweden by Godly men,
1675 in Torsaker Sweden. Thanks to the dark arts
of these zealous men of God 71 innocent Swedes,
65 women, 6 men accused of witchcraft.
But the fun had just begun. Shortly after the trail the 71
beheaded and burned on the stake, a banner day for
the Lord’s work in the twisted minds of more
Satanic than Godly men, more sadistic than holy.
A blight upon religion to be sure. No angels, no saints, no infinite
God intervened. The falsely accused went up in the fiery smoke,
headless and betrayed by the leaders of their flocks, a fine day
for dark forces, if they exist.
Were I the Supreme Being back then, I would have smote the
religious desecrators of the faith with a thousand lightning bolts
and maybe some locusts and plagues just to smite them more.
And I would have welcomed the 71 into heaven evermore.
Bob Boyd
What Happened to Hitler When He Died?
Here’s my theory that I will tell:
At first he felt the anguishing weight
of all the horrors, of all the sorrows
of all the deaths upon his darkened soul,
a dark soul no Divine Light could enter
consigned into something akin to Hell,
near eternal penance for the multitudes of
sorrows, horrors, and deaths he like a demon
possessing a madman, cast upon the world.
Conjuring the insidious evil of the Holocaust,
he would endure a similar suffering in a Hell
of his diabolical Karma that would go on and on.
After thousands of years of unspeakable suffering,
humbled and remade enough to begin a gradual
ascent to higher worlds where timeless
years later, he would find a loving forgiving
God awaiting him in an eternal paradise
beyond words, beyond imagination
permeated with unconditional love and
eternal unending bliss.
Of course my theory could be harebrained wrong
Perhaps Hitler was reincarnated repeatedly
as an endangered dog in a country where
a dog was a lip-smacking gourmet delight,
But who among us could be right?
Bob Boyd
When The Love of My Life Died at Age 18
My love, sweet Marella, died in 1962; a savage colon cancer took her out.
Only 18, just beginning life to be my forever wife ended.
The day she died I think subconsciously I wanted to drink myself to death.
That mournful night I drank beer, whisky, wine, and other drinks I can’t remember.
I passed out, when I don’t know, woke up in the Emergency Room and was doing okay under the critical circumstances until I remembered Marella was dead.
Perhaps because I was little more than a lamenting, lifeless corpse full of booze crying uncontrollable tears, I died of a broken heart when my ticker stopped ticking and I was clinically dead.
Above my body watching doctors frantically trying to save me, I didn’t want to go back to my devastated life without Marella, my sweet Marella.
As if she read my thoughts, Marella appeared before me in spirit, dressed in a white glowing gown looking more beautiful and more radiant than she ever did on earth.
Transmitting thoughts, reading each others minds, talking was impossible, we swore a love allegiance, and Marella told me as surely as the stars lit up the night sky we’d be together again and forever.
Cruelly, at that glorious, unforgettable moment I was slammed back into my body, a doctor pounding paddles on my chest, the feel of my body heavy and uncomfortable after being in my light, ethereal body.
Now each night I meet Marella in dreams, and a dream wife is good enough for me, my love for her strong enough to wait until I really die and I’m reunited with my sweet Marella forever.
Bob Boyd
In the Rock Hills of Lalibela
Hewn into rock hills in Lalibela
sacred second Jerusalem
stands in Ethiopia.
Place of pilgrimage
sacred site where
pilgrims come to pray.
For over a thousand years
infused with the prayers
of millions.
A giant etched cross
adorns the top sealed
with a promise of heaven.
Stone shrine conferring
blessings, the magnificent
Church of Saint George.
Secret High School Crushes
I remember in high school
A galaxy away
When a high school girl
Would secretly harbor a crush
On a high school boy
And he’d be oblivious
Unfortunately.
I know I missed out on
Some of those sweet
High School girl crushes.
I remember being told
So and so had a
Wicked crush on me
After the fact and
After she had a
Lucky boyfriend.
If only I’d known.
Bob Boyd
The Dancing Woman In The 30’s Song
I love the pretty dancing woman at 1:22 minutes
in the rousing 30’s song, I Want To Be Bad.
I love how she so gracefully, so elegantly moves.
My overstimulated imagination wonders what she was like.
I’d like to go back in time and have a chance to meet her,
a lovelorn part of me believes it can see a soulmate
whose love I missed by being born too late for her.
I further dream of our passed ships
docking in the afterlife for love evermore.
Sure it’s crazy, but isn’t love sometimes crazy,
and who could emphatically prove my silly wishful
speculation is utterly impossible nonsense?
Is it not said that truth is stranger than fiction?
So what if this is one of those truths and
a pretty dancing woman in a 30’s song
is my forever soulmate awaiting me
in the afterlife?
Bob Boyd
Nature’s Ploy?
Sometimes
I wonder about
romantic love.
Is it real or
Nature’s ploy
to propagate
our species.
If that is
the case
what’s the point
of all of it?
Why the endless
streams of
humans flowing
In and out of
existence?
Maybe it’s
merely a
game of
bored gods
With little
better to do.
Bob Boyd
Cloven Hoofed
People are dying all around me
At work, in my neighborhood, and in the news
Old, middle-aged, young, and babies too.
It’s like the Reaper has been loosened
In my semi-immediate vicinity
Killing people with a dogged impunity.
Worries me about my own mortality
If I’m next on Grim’s hit list
Or in some invisible warzone
With unseeable stealth bombs
Leaving no booms or residues
Quietly taken hordes of people out.
Maybe it’s just the usual suspect
Beelzebub up to his usual MO
Doing his cloven hoofed Devil’s work.
Bob Boyd
The Aliens of 2032
It all happened so suddenly and so undetectably that
no one knew what to do with the Aliens who
landed all over America in 2032.
A buzzing sound dominated the skies, and suddenly they were
in every village, town, and city.
Detecting no Imminent danger because the aliens looked
like cute and cuddly teddy bears and seemed affable,
the government held a meeting to decide what to do.
Before the meeting was over, the teddy bear aliens turned evil,
or always were, and shut down everything, the military and defense systems too with that buzzing sound.
Then fast as a second on a watch’s second hand, they captured humans everywhere,
Even the ones in the meeting
Even ones in airplanes
Even ones in submarines
Even ones in coal mines and
Even ones called preppers.
No one was safe. No one escaped.
At first, they cherry-picked the populace maybe for taste tests,
possibly for snacks.
Then with a round of unearthly howls, scarier than wolves, their
voracious appetites took over, and as if in an all-you-can-eat buffet,
they devoured a Guinness Book Record of 341,044, 641 humans in 30 seconds.
At 341,044,642, the total US population, they were too full to eat me.
The aliens, their appetites appeased, buzzed back to wherever
they came from and left me unmolested, unabducted, unprobed,
and uneaten – to my ever-grateful surprise.
Despite my luck, I was lonely until the population count was actually 341,044/643, a bureaucratic error, and another person survived.
By chance or a fortuitous fate, the other survivor was a woman.
I met her in my small town in Idaho, a 30s-something
hot woman named Mandy.
And we became a couple with everything in America ours for free.
Bob Boyd
Fear Not Death
No need for fear when Death arrives
To take us to the eternity of Love and Light
Relocation to a higher, brighter world
Freed from the uncertainties of this impermanence
Passing illusion, clung to as if our lives go on here forever
Except for occasional reminders of our mortality
Death of loved ones, killer diseases, and more
World on edge with ever-present threats of nuclear holocaust
Murders, wars, atrocities, and injustice across the planet
Tenuous existence, we are like flickering candle flames
Soon to burn out as numberless ones before us
But mercifully saved by Death,
Usher To the eternity of Love and Light.
Bob Boyd