Category: Poetry

I’m listening to an old love song where a guy is singing
about how he “can’t fight this feeling” about falling in love.

I’m thinking just go for it Man. Tell her you love her,
for God’s sake. Don’t be a damn wuss.

Then I have a reversal of my thinking. Maybe
this guy is just off a relationship where a woman
crushed his heart to pieces and he is gun shy
about jumping into what could be another train wreck.

I’m feeling empathy about his hesitation, and, maybe,
I’ve been there, though I cannot recall if I have.

But as I listen to the song further along, I can see
he’s already lost the battle to safeguard his heart
just by the fact that he has to make a big deal
out of his denial for a good three minutes in a song.

And I’m back to the starting point of just telling him
to get on with it and tell her what she already knows.

Bob Boyd

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
the saddest are these: “It might have been.”

~ John Greenleaf Whitter

I heard that saying as a child and came to
experience the full meaning of it in terms of
missed opportunities with women.

Sometimes I’ve thought about these
women and wonder what might have
been.

Like the beautiful red-haired teenage
girl I danced with at a YMCA teenage
dance and was too shy to talk to
because I was tongue-tied by her beauty.

Like the lovely blonde-haired woman
who kept talking to me at an
outdoor event and I was too dumb to
realize she was into me. I wonder
what might have been with her too.

Like after I went on a double date
with a friend and his date, and
my date wasn’t interested in me,
and years later when I’d returned
home from the Air Force I found out
his date had had a crush on me, but
she was married, and it was too late
to find out what might have been.

I’ve had too many miss opportunities,
what might have beens. If only I could
do a rewind and start all over again.

Bob Boyd

Chris Hartonas, 40, and Raymond Vakili, 48,
well equipped mountaineers with years of
experience and considered two of the best,
vanished climbing Mount Rainier in Washington.
a mountain they’d climbed many times before.

Despite extensive searches by park rangers,
Rainier Mountaineering Guides, search dogs,
volunteers and friends of the men, and US
Army Reserve and helicopters, the men
to this day have never been found, as if they
vanished without a trace.

Another inexplicable 411 missing case.
Hunters, trackers, seasoned hikers have
gone missing under mysterious
circumstances too along with hundreds
of thousands of other 411 cases.

Some believe supernatural forces are
at play, and I can understand that,
given all the 411s with no logical
explanations about how they
went permanently missing.

Bob Boyd

Because of robberies, assaults on employees and trashing of their stores,
Dunkin Donuts stores are now encased in bullet proof glass.
Unbelievable it came to that, something you never heard of in the past.
It seems too many donut eaters in shy town have become more unruly and dangerous
than in genteel times of the past when a company didn’t need bullet proof glass to sell a donut in Chicago.

Bob Boyd

I like the saying expect the unexpected.
To me it’s great and practical advice.
It’s easy to get lulled into feeling
as if good times will always be good,
or as if everything will go along predictably.
I feel an awareness about how things can
change in a millisecond for the best or the
worst that you never expected is a good
awareness to cultivate, like the saying expect
the best but be prepared for the worst.
And the unexpected could be an auspicious
occurrence, like a new love coming into your life,
or having a deadly cancer that goes into remission.
The unexpected is different for me now, good or bad.
I see it as something new and exciting in my life,
regardless of the good or bad it can bring into it.
An old life can be that boring where any change
is an antidote to the less exciting elderly years
when the dreams are over and memories are
all you have left of them.

Bob Boyd

I once talked to an elderly woman who grew up in the country who spoke of older relatives who had passed away long ago.
She said they knew all about the herbs in the forest and the many remedies they were for and that this knowledge used to be handed down from generation to generation. But she said today that knowledge is forgotten.

I was impressed with her story and amazed that people in her family once had that kind of knowledge about the natural world.
I wondered how extensive that knowledge was and how far back in her family it has been known and how effective it was.
Her story reminded me of the cunning folk of the Middle Ages, and I would have liked to have learned that kind of knowledge or had lived at a time when I could have seen it in practice.

Bob Boyd

An eccentric, his name was Henry Cope.
He lived in northeast Hampshire, England
and had an obsession with the color green
and only ate green vegetables and fruits.

He dressed in green impeccably and his
apartment was painted green as well as
having a green sofa, green chairs,
green tables, a green bed and green curtains.

His two-wheeled carriage was also green
along with his riding gloves and whips.
Around his neck, he sported a green
cravat.

He was said to have lost his wits from too
much studying or from his rejection by
a beautiful woman he loved.

He is thought to have died in 1810 in
St Luke’s Hospital in Old Street London,
a hospital for “incurable pauper lunatics,”
though other theories about his death abound.

Now he is one of 12-15 ghosts alleged to
haunt Bramshill House in Hampshire, England.

Bob Boyd

The days have gotten warmer.
The sun is shining brighter.
It’s too hot to leave the windows
closed and insulated.

After I free the windows of
the insulation, open them,
and pull down the screens,
the rooms begin to breath in
the invigorating fresh air, and
my skin and mind revel in
that fresh air feeling that
I had almost forgotten about.

Bob Boyd

Her name is Claire.
She runs a YouTube
channel about
the morbid, the
mysterious and
the macabre
called Don’t Scare
Claire.

She’s English, blonde
beautiful, intelligent
and articulate.

Her Queen’s English
accent is a delight
to listen to.

Her angelic looks
seem a contradiction
to the subject
material of
her often
scary videos.

But damn she does
them so good and
her research and
presentations are
impeccable.

Watch Don’t Scare Clair,
if you dare.

Bob Boyd

To save some time, he took a shortcut through a cemetery.

A female ghost appeared in front of him and with mesmerizing eyes looked into his and stunned and froze him rendering him unable to move.

When the female ghost vanished and he regained control of his body, his body shook, his nerves were frayed, and he ran out of the cemetery. But the horror didn’t end there.

That night his body froze while he slept he saw the female ghost with the mesmerizing eyes in a dream.

This went on for three months until he lost his mind and ended his life by leaping out of the window of his sixth floor apartment and joining the female ghost in death.

And now with mesmerizing eyes he wanders the cemetery with her every single night.

Bob Boyd

Maybe it sounds strange, but to me cemeteries
are places of peace. I don’t make it a habit of
visiting them. I haven’t been to one in years and
will probably never visit one again in my life.

But the times I’ve visited them I always felt a
sense of peace, sometimes sadness. The
sadness was when I would see tombstones
of children who never had a chance to really live.

Once while on a hike, I found an old abandoned
cemetery in a forest. The markers were worn
and barely readable, and I remember some
of the deceased had been born in the 1800s.

Though I don’t consider myself superstitious,
I wouldn’t find cemeteries peaceful at night.
I’d be too creeped out and a little fearful.
Maybe I’ve seen too many horror movies.

Bob Boyd

Bi-pedal.
3’5” to 4’2” tall.
25-50 pounds in weight.
Head larger than humans
and elongated.
Large slanted black eyes
that almost wrap around sides
of its head.
No brow ridge.
Two small slits for nose
above slit-like mouth.
No external ears.
Smooth, find-celled skin
pale bluish-gray in color.
No hair on face or body.
Long arms.
Hands have three long
fingers and a thumb.
Feet small and narrow
Four toes joined together
with a membrane.
Origin unknown.

Is this true? I don’t know
any more than you do,
as to whether it’s true,
except it’s from an
alleged 1950s Eyes Only
government document.

Bob Boyd

Bipedal.
Larger, more rounded heads
than human heads.
Small wide almond-shaped eyes
with two lids.
Large pupils, whites
of eyes pale grey.
Skin pale, chalky-yellow,
thick and pebbled.
Approximately
5’5″ in height.
Weight 80-100 pounds.
Small ears low on head.
Nose thin and long.
Mouth wider than
human mouths, lips thin.
No body or facial hair.
Body muscled and thin.
Little or no body fat.
Small hands, four
long digits, no thumb.
Legs bowed, feet large.
Origin Unknown.

Is this true? I don’t know
any more than you do,
as to whether it’s true,
except it’s from an
alleged 1950s Eyes Only
government document.

Bob Boyd

When I lived in the Philippines, I saw that skin whitening products were popular, as if having a darker skin color was not as acceptable as being a lighter hue.

I found that a sad trend when I imagined a little girl growing up thinking because her skin was darker than white, that she was somehow less attractive and less valued.

To me, the darker skins of some women in the Philippines made them more exotically attractive and natural compared to wearing false skin whiteners.

Yet, despite my take on this, it is sad that we live in a world where some people believe right or wrong that the color of their skin makes them more acceptable or less acceptable.

Sadder still that in some countries that is, or has been, a discriminative norm instead of, to borrow from Martin Luther King, valuing people by “the content of their character.”

Bob Boyd

When I first heard the saying,
“No good deed goes unpunished,”
it seemed so contrary to all I’d
known: Good deeds beget good
feelings and good merit.

Even religions expose the value
and the merit of good deeds.

But I have seen many cases
since hearing that saying
where good deeds were punished:

When I lived in Vermont,
a woman who lived in
Burlington, Vermont
always invited homeless
people into her home to
console and feed them.

For her kindness, she
eventually was sliced
to pieces by a crazed,
homeless psycho.

Two young ministers
gave three men a ride
out of kindness. The men
kidnapped the ministers
at gunpoint, shot
them to death and
stole their money
and their car.

I could cite many more
examples, some my
own, but as you can
see and probably knew,
sometimes good deeds
do get punished.

My final take on this
is do good deeds, but
be careful in doing
them.

Bob Boyd

Born into a highly religious family, with members of her family prominent in the church, she grew up a devout, Christian woman. Graduated from a Christian College, found a Christian husband there.

Sometime after they married, she got a job as a secretary at a Christian College and met a young, promising Christian student there. Their friendship deepened and despite the sin of adultery an affair ensued.

When their relationship progressed and they fell in love, the student asked her, “Why don’t you divorce your husband?”

She replied to the student, “In my church people don’t get divorced, but if he were to die ….”

Unexpectedly the student did the unimaginable and killed the husband by sneaking into his home and stabbing him to death.

The police never solved the crime. The diabolical Christian couple eventually broke up. Perhaps they couldn’t live with their shared infamy.

Years later, the Christian woman had married a dentist and had twins. The student had gone on to another college for further study.

The police decided to reopen the cold case. They traveled to the Christian woman’s house not suspecting her as a suspect but to reexamine the details of the murder.

When the Christian woman opened her door to the police, she broke down and confessed everything and was arrested along with the student.

This true crime case puzzled me. At first, I couldn’t figure out how two Christians could even consider murdering anyone for fear of, in their belief system, going to hell.

After pondering it for a while, I came up with two theories. The first was maybe these Christians ascribed to the belief that once you are saved by Jesus, you are always saved no matter what you do after being saved.

And maybe they delusionally thought even murder wouldn’t negate what they may have seen as something akin to a binding, contractual agreement.

Or, probably more likely, they believed no matter how heinous the sin, all you had to do was ask Jesus for forgiveness and the sin would be forgiven, the slate wiped clean, the soul cleansed.

Still it’s hard for me to imagine how the student, supposedly a devout Christian, could have been duped into committing a murder and ruining his life and maybe his afterlife.

I was six or seven years old and taking swimming lessons at a community pool and when I was out of the pool standing in front of the swings, I felt a soft tap on my back.

I turned around and saw a cute, red-haired girl my age smiling at me.

I was too young for boy girl romantic feelings and the power of flirtations back then, but something in me besides my back was touched. I think it was a budding romantic heart.

Before any words were spoken, the red-haired girl’s mother took her hand and walked away with her while she was looking back at me smiling.

I never saw that red-haired girl again, but, curiously, I think about her now and then even as an old man.

I’ve often wondered what would have happened if I’d met her again when she and I were old enough to fall in love, and I feel that would have happened.

I wonder how her life turned out. Did she have a full and happy life? Is she still alive? What was her name? But, alas, I’ll never find out any of those things.

Sometimes in overly imaginative moments, I’ve wondered if I’ll see her again in the afterlife.

Maybe she’ll be there as a beautiful, red-haired woman and tap me softly on my back, and I’ll turn around and fall in love with her.

And for reasons unclear to me, I got a little teary-eyed writing this poem.

Bob Boyd

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For years there have been many reports of UFOs, also called USOs, entering and exiting the sea, aircraft operate freely in the water and in the air.

Tim Gallaudet, an oceanographer and former Naval rear admiral told Fox news in 2024 about the underwater submerged objects (USOs).

And in a 2019 29-page report, Gallaudet wrote, “Pilots, credible observers and calibrated military instrumentation have recorded objects accelerating at rates and crossing the air-sea interface in ways not possible for anything made by humans.”

Since I’ve looked into these otherworldly matters a bit, I’ve read of other USO sightings, and these do seem to have some credibility.

But stranger and more bizarre than this are Ufologists who classify aliens into 4 categories: Greys, Nordics, Insects, and Reptilians.

This all seems so strange and like Sci Fi conspiracy theories, but sometimes “truth is stranger than fiction.”

Bob Boyd

I change into my gray pants
and my long sleeve red shirt.
I put on my black sports coat
and my ruddy blue Gatsby cap.
I hop into my 2008 Honda
turn the key in the ignition,
back out of the apartment
parking area and head
out onto Wendover Avenue.
Fifteen minutes later
I’m walking into Harris
Teeter, my favorite grocery
store. I amble past the
many shoppers until I
arrive at the ice cream
freezer cases. I slide open
one of the doors and grab
a pint of Haagen Dazs
Chocolate Chip Cookie
Dough ice cream. I check
out at the self service
registers, transaction
approved, and I drive
home dreaming of the
first Haagen Dazs bite.
And think to myself,
it’s been a good night out.
Sure you could say it’s
boring, but for me at
my age, it’s far more
enjoyable than when
in a dark ages part
of my misspent youth,
a night out meant
getting drunk and crazy.

Bob Boyd