Category: Poetry

I’d like to have a dog,
a better companion
one could not ask
for

an unconditional love
like no other

always excited to see
you when you have
been away

whether you were
gone for a month
or a day

you don’t get that
kind of excitement
from humans

I don’t have a dog
because I just don’t
want to do the work

of being the dog’s
indentured, personal
poop scooper for the
rest of my life

Bob Boyd

being in her arms was always a safe haven
from the worries and the troubles of the world
being in her arms was always a sanctuary
from the problems I brought upon myself
being in her arms was like a shangri-la
compared to the world outside her embrace
I wish I could have spent my entire life
in the blissful loving confines of her arms
but all things eventually come to an end
and tears often fall from partings

bob boyd

He’d been on a 3 month meditation retreat in the 70s,
meditating up to 10 times daily.

He called me when the retreat was over.
Said he was in cosmic consciousness.
Said he could look into my eyes and take me there too.
Said he had psychic powers.

His voice sounded strange as he talked on.
His words became disconnected.
I knew he wasn’t in cosmic consciousness.
I knew he didn’t have psychic powers.
I knew he had had a break with reality.

Then he told me he was calling from the ER.
They didn’t know what he was talking about.
They weren’t highly evolved enough to understand
higher states of consciousness.

As he talked on, my heart sank and it was clear
he had suffered a severe mental breakdown.

He never completely recovered.
He bounced in and out of psych wards
for the rest of the time I knew him.

Maybe he was predisposed to mental illness.
But I think he overdosed on way too much meditation
and compromised his mental faculties beyond repair,
and I know that has happened to others.

Bob Boyd

Red and blue long dresses
Flowered leis around their necks
Floral arrangement on their heads
Soft harmonious music playing
Singer has a mellow, enchanting voice
Singing in a language I don’t understand
But it doesn’t matter because
The singing and the music is so good
Seven women dancing on a beach on a sunny day
Swaying to the music like Tahitian goddesses
Transported to earth from some other world
Oh how beautiful their movements look
Oh how peaceful it makes me feel
Watching them dance and hearing the music
If only the world could be as
Peaceful as this music and this dancing
Makes my mind and my soul feel:
Fare Ha’api’ira’a Ori Turereura – E Ruaragi

Bob Boyd

I listen to a playlist I created on YouTube,
old songs I never tire of, songs like:

I Don’t Want to Live Without You by Foreigner

I’d Really Like To See You Tonight by Dan and John Ford Coley

Nights Are Forever Without You by Dan and John Ford Coley

Missing You by John Waite

I Can’t Make You Love Me Bonnie Raitt

I Go Crazy by Paul Davis

Laughter In the Rain by Neil Sedaka

Second Chance by 38 Special

Right Down the Line Gerry Raffety

And many more songs from the ever distant past,
that keeps passing faster and faster leaving
me and all those songs far behind and facing away.

But to me these songs sound today just as
fresh and new as they did back in their day
when they were hits on the charts, as if
I’m oblivious to the fact that those songs I
love are no longer fresh and are decades old —

as if I’m stuck in a musical time warp.

Bob Boyd

She put the thought form of her essence,
all that was good, loving and beautiful
about her into the cosmos.

She considered this practice she made
up like her psychic pheromones,
an experiment to connect with and
bring the love of her life to her
via preternatural means.

She practiced sending her psychic pheromones
into the cosmos daily for six months
until when she was about to give up and
thought her experiment a foolish failure.

But on that day a man mistakenly bumped
into her at a grocery store embarrassed and apologetic.
and conversation and a love at first sight ensued.

A few dates later, she knew … she knew … her
experiment had worked, and she had found the
love of her life.

Bob Boyd

Imagine if like flowers and tree leaves
reborn in spring, reincarnation is real.

Imagine if nobody ever goes to a hell,
an eternal damnation with no way out

locked in to suffer endless torments forever
without any chances for reprieves.

Imagine if all sentient and maybe insentient forms
had a chance to eventually live in eternal bliss conscious

akin to the highest heaven, and that all stories
ultimately had happy endings.

Though I can’t say if reincarnation is real or unreal,
and I wouldn’t want to come back in the midst of

a nuclear holocaust or something akin to Stalin’s
purges or the Killing Fields of Cambodia

I like the idea of everyone eventually having redemption through various life corrections, a school for souls

until they got it right, graduated, and reached the heights of spiritual perfection,

what the Hindus call Sat Chit Ananda –
Eternal Bliss Consciousness.

Bob Boyd

They hovered over that wild west Texas town in April of 1866.

They were looking for a genuine western gunslinger.

When Wild Bob Walker beat an hombre to the draw and shot him clean dead in the center of the town, the aliens beamed down a large circular light that covered Wild Bob and sucked him into their triangular shaped UFO.

They whisked him away to their planet, 1,000 light years from earth, and got there in seconds.

A great catch, they featured him in their Extraterrestrial Zoo as a main attraction.

Sold out tickets for a year, mainly because of how terrifying the strange specimen looked

and how fast that monstrosity could draw his primitive weapons out of their holsters and pull the triggers of those empty guns as the tiny and spidery, googly-eyed zoo visitors expanded and chortled with the greatest delight.

Bob Boyd

If you’re crazy or brave enough to walk through Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery at night,
you get the eerie feeling you’re not supposed to be there.

It’s deep in the forest and the road to it is closed off, and when you cross the threshold into it,
you feel like you’re in a strange forbidden world, and the spirits are restless there.

An old farmhouse that’s like a mirage might materialize momentarily before you, and you might see the ghosts of gangland hits that allegedly were dumped in a deep algae-covered pond there.

And maybe you’ll see the lighted orbs that come floating out at night, blue, red, white, orange and all colors and sizes.

Some people think they are spirits or their souls. Others think they are manifestations of spirits, but nobody really knows what they are.

Maybe there’s a rational explanation for these orbs that would debunk the paranormal claims, but whatever the case, at least they’re not malevolent and won’t try to possess you — far as I know.

But if you go there, cross your fingers, just in case they might, to seek some luck and the protection of the holy cross.

Bob Boyd

A widow she lives alone
her husband of sixty years
died a year ago
and is buried in
Forest Lawn Cemetery
she visits his gravesite
except when it’s raining
like her tears that keep falling
she thinks of him
and feels like crying again
and wishes she had died too
and it’s been so unbearable
starting her life all over
alone and without him
she hopes and she prays
she’ll be with him again
after all those happy years
that were mostly like heaven

dying from a terminal cancer
she lays down in her bed
closes her eyes and
feels her life ending
she opens her eyes
right before she dies
and sees her husband
above her in white light
smiling and holding out
his hand toward her
her soul leaves her body
she smiles and takes his hand
and hand in hand heart to heart
they float up to heaven
in love and married forever.

Bob Boyd

Pounding of drums
gyrating of hips
swirling of bodies
whirling of long thick hair
hands moving eloquently
as if hands could speak
eyes occasionally looking up
somewhere between
the pounding of drums
the gyrating of hips
the eyes looking up
the mesmerizing effect
the trancelike feeling
I realize the hula
is more than a dance
a spiritual practice
a form of worship
to whichever deity
or deities out of the
hundreds of gods
and goddesses
in the Hawaiian
spiritual tradition
the dynamite dance is
zealously praying to.

Bob Boyd

Cursed forever
victim of a vamp’s
vampiric bite
I rise from the grave
every dark night
fanged creature
ghoulish soul
hideous intentions
mesmerizing gaze
subdues my prey
and obediently
they surrender to me
without hesitation
without reservation
they offer me their
inviting jugular veins
my fangs pierce
and I imbibe
and sate myself
on their warm
invigorating blood
the hunt for prey
continues until
I’m caught and
slaughtered
with a stake
only to be reborn
a fresh vampire
in my next life.

Bob Boyd

Also called Stamps Cemetery located in
the mountains of East Tennessee.

Some graves new, many old
and decaying,
made of sandstone.

Inverted stars on a few graves,
mistaken for pentagrams,
which is why the cemetery is
wrongly thought to have
evil witches buried in it.

Some old Tent stone graves,
two long thin slabs propped up
against two triangular caps
at the ends, often with
headstones – maybe to protect
corpses from animals. Maybe
just tradition.

Many people named Stamps
buried there, one named
Stanford Stamps born in 1811,
died in 1895, age 84.

No witches, only about 80
regular people buried there.

Many tombstones from the 1800s.
More are new.

No ghosts, maybe the Stamps
Cemetery is too boring for them,
or the good religious mountain
people all went to heaven
instead of hanging around dead.

Some old graves had flowers
in front of them. Many had coins
on the tops of the tombstones.

Perhaps the coins were symbols
of good luck in the afterlife.

No one seems to mess with the
coins, perhaps for fear
of being cursed or
out of profound respect
for the dead.

The cemetery is serene
with only the sounds of
birds chirping in the background.
Perhaps the birds are singing
sweet dirges for the dead.

Got a good peaceful feeling
seeing that cemetery on YouTube,
wouldn’t mind being buried in a
peaceful cemetery like that
when I die.

Bob Boyd

Six young women in their teens
beautiful dancers at Ziegfeld Follies.
Futures bright, big dreams of
becoming famous and successful.
The world was theirs.

Made a pact in 1916 to meet
at a restaurant in New York
in 1936 to talk about their
successes in those 20 years.

Olive Thomas, Fifi Alsop,
Martha Mansfield, Lilyan Tashman,
Kathryn Lambert and
Bessie Chatterton Poole
were their names.

Olive Thomas died in 1920,
ingested a poison by mistake.

Fifi Alsop died in 1922,
alcoholism combined with
a drug for sleeping.

Martha Mansfield, died in 1923,
burned to death in an accident.

Lilyan Tashman died in 1934,
Abdominal Cancer.

Bessie Chatterton Poole
Died 1928, Heart Disease.

Kathryn Lambert, only one
who survived for the meeting
in 1936.

She probably said a silent
prayer for the others who
weren’t there and wondered
why they had such tragic fates
that stole the dreams they
had when they were teenage
Ziegfeld Follies dancers
and the world was theirs.

Bob Boyd

Waves of joy
streams of pleasure
your love washes
over me

Bob Boyd

My friend, Don, fed up with women,
chose a life size doll instead of a real woman
at an exorbitant cost of $3,000.

I said that’s a high price tag for a doll.
Don said, “It’s a bargain compared to how
much money I’ve blown on women.”

I let the conversation go at that,
but wondered if Don had lost his mind,
and, besides, I wondered what would
he and the doll he called Alma talk about?

I got the answer a week later when I
visited Don and Alma, and Don spoke to
her as if she was carrying on a conversation
with him.

A year later, Don got really crazy and said
Alma had died of cancer and he had buried
her in his backyard.

Two weeks later, Don showed up at my apartment
with a crazed look in his eyes.

“Alma’s haunting me!” he said.

I said, “Maybe you should see a shrink.”

Offended, Don stomped out of my apartment
and yelled he needed an exorcist and not a shrink.

Days later, worried about Don, I visited him at his
house and found him dead in his backyard with
a resurrected, dirt covered Alma on top of him.

The police said he died of a massive heart attack,
and joked about the doll, which I absconded with,
sprayed holy water on, and burned to ashes just in case.

Bob Boyd

In Louisiana where he lived, he drove around one night
like a madman in his old Honda trying to forget his ex

who despite being engaged to him and planning
on marrying him

left him for his friend who was going to be
his best man at their wedding.

He drove on highways and byways all over Louisiana,
but still couldn’t get her out of his mind.

The break up, the end of the engagement
and the marriage

were too big a heartache for him and
when the police raced after him for speeding

he lost control of his mind and became
even crazier and more reckless.

Miraculously, he escaped from the police,
and seemed to have vanished from this earth.

He was never found, but there’s a crying male ghost
that appears at the shores of Lake Pontchartrain,

and there might be an old Honda buried in
the water there.

Bob Boyd

A sinister little boy
dancing around
gravestones asks
visitors to stay and
play with him.

A woman in white
hovers above
the gravestones
but says nothing.

A man in dark
19th century
clothes named
Ephraim with dark
sockets in place
of eyes, said to
yell at women
and scare them
away.

What to make
of these ghosts
I cannot say.

But many claim
to have seen them.

And maybe these
spirits are real,
but the bigger
question is if
they are real,
why are they
still on earth
and not
elsewhere
in the afterlife?

Bob Boyd

I remember her last resigned gasp,
The awful rattling in her throat
The end of her, the end of everything,
Without her, I wanted to die too.
For ten years I’ve had endless laments
Never ceasing in my love for her,
Never loving another woman,
True to her as if she never died.
Now with a deadly stage 4 cancer
My diseased life coming to an end
I hear a voice, see a pretty face
My Love smiling and waiting for me.

Bob Boyd

Her beauty captivated him.
Never saw a woman as beautiful as her.

Her face and body perfect,
eyes heavenly blue.

But he failed to take the time to
know her beyond the superficial.

Fell in love with her immediately,
married her too soon.

Now he’s in a marriage from hell
with a woman impossible to live with

who is planning to ruin his reputation
and his life

when she tells all in court with some
lies thrown in and ruins him financially too.

Bob Boyd