Category: Poetry

Sitting in my second floor apartment on top of the street below, people taking leisurely strolls on the sidewalk, an elderly woman walking a pesky pug dog, an old man hobbling on a cane, and farther than I can see, people being born, people dying, lots of joy, lots of crying.

A ceiling fan spins tirelessly over my head, fish in my aquariums swim about, clouds drift in the blue sky, the earth spins beneath my feet, the planets in the cosmos rotate above my head, the universe expands, the Godhead at the controls, and I’m sitting here, heart beating, lungs breathing, eyes seeing, trying to fathom what this creation is really all about.

Bob Boyd

A lonely, monarch male butterfly sat upon a pink verbena flower pining for his true love, his magnificent, stained glass orange and black lined wings fluttering and emitting pheromones with the hope of attracting his true love.

A beautiful, female monarch butterfly swooned over his pheromones and his handsomeness. She flew to his flowered perch, her wings and her heart fluttering, and it was love at first sight. They embraced and made love for sixteen hours, as was the butterfly custom when true love bloomed.

And though the monarch male butterfly only lived for two weeks, those sixteen hours were the best hours of his life.

Bob Boyd

He’d been watching her for a week, getting her patterns down, a pretty, single mother with two kids.

A serial rapist and murderer, he had to have her and her life

He knew her schedules, when she went to work, when she came home, and he knew she lived alone, except for two toddlers, and went to bed at 10 pm.

The night arrived when his lust could no longer be denied. This was the night he was going to rape and kill her, and maybe her kids, and vanish into obscurity afterwards.

She heard him breaking into her house when the sound woke her up.

She yelled, “I’ve got a gun! He yelled back, “I have one too!”

As he busted down the door, she began shooting. He shot back.

When the shooting stopped and the gun smoke cleared, she was alive and he was dead never to rape and murder another woman again.

I don’t own a gun and would like to live in a gun free society, but it cannot be denied that sometimes guns save lives.

And I can understand how some see the need to take extra precautions to protect themselves and their families. And I have no problem with that.

Bob Boyd

I will never forget how helpful you were to me
when I started my work helping the elderly.
An African American woman, you treated
people of all races the same in your loving
and compassionate lifetime of service to
the sick, the dying, the homeless,
the poor, and the elderly.

For your years of dedicated service, you
deserved the street named after you:
Dorothy Brown Street, and the many
accolades you were honored with for
your incomparable compassion and
all that you did selflessly for others.

I regret I was in the Philippines when you died
and never got to go to your funeral.

Years later when I returned to America and
settled back in Greensboro, I tried to find
your gravesite, but I could never find it
to pay you homage and thanks for all the
help you gave me for finding services
and resources to better serve the
many seniors needing help
in our community.

It is my hope that when I die,
I’ll see you again to thank you for being
the wonderful human being you were and
for your exemplary service to others,
and your expertise you shared with me.

Bob Boyd

As a tall and slender ectomorph,
he was never an easy gainer of
muscle mass, but as a hard gainer
he had modest success and
16 inch arms with bulging biceps
when he was a skinny but strong
teenage kid.

But now as an old man who has
worked out all his life, that
unforgiving sarcopenia has stripped
him of his past muscles gains.

And though he works out steadfastly,
pumping up his muscles three times
a week, his muscles have become
nonresponsive, and he looks like a
skinny old man who never had any
muscles and never worked out.

But at an age when many of his
peers are on walkers or in nursing
homes, he’s still stronger than he
would have been if he never
touched a weight or worked out.
And he feels fantastic when he
works out despite the lack of
results.

More importantly, working out
makes him feel more alive and
incredibly relaxed, and that
alone is worth the iron willed
unfaltering effort.

Bob Boyd

I went downstairs to check my mail, and, shudder, I saw a letter from the North Carolina Department of Revenue.

Oh no, I thought, they’re after me for more tax money. Turbo Tax must have screwed up, and now I have to send God knows how much more tax money to them thanks to an error not of my making.

With trembling hands, an increasing pulse rate, my heartbeat quickening, a sickening feeling in my stomach, a sense of dread in my mind, I reluctantly peel the foreboding envelope open.

With a sigh and tremendous relief, I discover a single page with a check for $120 attached to the bottom of it.

Whew! Sometimes in this life you get a break.

Bob Boyd

Brave soul
lost left arm once
while walking past
a lioness’s cage.

She seized the arm
from between the
bars and damaged it
so badly it had to be
amputated.

Despite that attack,
he became a
renown lion tamer

known as being
bold and
adventurous with
the lions and
cautioned about
being too reckless,
at times turning
his back on them.

On January 3rd,
1872, he fell to the
ground during a
performance with
five large lions.

A black Barbary lion
roared and leaped
upon him and the
four other lions
roared and joined in
mauling Macarte and
ripping off his flesh.

In the audience, men
shuddered and women
fainted at the
terrifying sight.

Eventually and with
great effort, Macarte
was rescued from
the lions, but his flesh
was torn from his bones.

And after the attack of
a quarter of an hour,
Macarte said, “I’m done
for,” and died on the
way to a hospital.

Bob Boyd

I’ve had that I feel like I’ve known you before feeling,
and though I’m hoping reincarnation isn’t factual
(more about that later), maybe when you get that
feeling, you have known that person in a former life.
Maybe as some reincarnation theories suggest,
groups of people reincarnate together.

Imagine if you have a love and a marriage that
lasted all your life and seemed as perfect as a
marriage could be. Perhaps you had found your
soulmate and you had been together in a former
life or lives and would be together until you both
get off the wheel of rebirth.

I’m hoping reincarnation isn’t factual because
imagine coming back on the cusp of a nuclear
holocaust or into something like a future
purge comparable to Stalin’s purges or the
Killing Fields of Cambodia?

However if you were coming back for love, for
the soulmate of your lifetimes, I believe it would
be worth it no matter the perils, no matter the hells.

Bob Boyd

a butterfly flutters past my window.
hard to imagine it was once a caterpillar.

hard to imagine a butterfly was once a
strange-looking insect like that.

amazing the transformative power
of nature

except how it has transformed me
from a virile young stallion to a dried
up old nag.

I would like to be as buoyant as a butterfly
but those days are gone for me.

Now the only buoyancy I can attain
is the freedom of my impending death

when like the earthbound caterpillar that
transforms into the radiant butterfly,
this earth-cocooned body will be reborn
into the freedom of a buoyant, beautiful spirit.

Bob Boyd

A child age 3 or 4 kicked out of UK state nursery during the years 2023-2024 for “abuse against sexual orientation and gender identity.”

And who made this insane decision? The United Kingdom’s Depart for Education (DfE).

It gets even crazier: 13 children ages 4 to 5 got suspended or “permanently excluded” in state primary schools for “transphobic or homophobic behavior” from 2022 to 2023.

It saddens me that England has come to this along with an out-of-control migrant crisis; for example, 17,000 came in illegally in 2020. In the year ending June 2024, the numbers rose to 38,784.

And British citizens have been arrested and thrown in prisons for tweets that the now Orwellian government deems offensive and unlawful.

There are also knifings and face disfiguring acid attacks on London streets, and free speech has died in Great Britain.

And thanks to Prime Minster two-tier Keir’s oppressive governance, if you are white, you will get a lengthier prison sentence than those with darker skin hues.

Big Ben is crying and London and Britain have fallen.

Bob Boyd

You might be able to lower your blood pressure by finding out your body type and your ideal weight and, if needed, exercising enough to drop down to your ideal weight.

For example, my body type is a 6’1″ ectomorph with an ideal weight between 169.1 and 183.2 lbs. and a healthy BMI range from 140.2 to 183.5 lbs.

I weighed 168 pounds in high school and have weighed as much as 220 lbs. when I was in my forties and fifties and wanted to pack on more muscle mass,

though for my ectomorph body frame I was carrying too much weight and too much body fat and might have had blood pressure a little high.

Remembering how I read in strength and muscle building forums that it was wise to get lighter when you got older, I eventually took that healthy advice.

I checked many ideal weight calculating websites to find out what my ideal weight would be.

I found the figures you see above, and through determination and hour upon hour of exercise bike riding and working out with resistance bands and weights, I whittled my weight down to just about what it was when I was in high school, 170 pounds.

This caused a decent decrease in my blood pressure, and make it easier for an aging heart to power a lighter, older body.

And to maintain that ideal weight as an elderly man, I ride my *Deskcycle exercise bike 2 hours daily at a leisurely pace and work out with dumbbells and resistance band 3 times a week.

And maybe finding out your ideal weight and dropping down to it, could reduce your blood pressure too if it’s higher than desirable.

Bob Boyd

*I have used my Deskcycle for 10 years with no problems. It retails for $149 on Amazon now, and I ride it while at my computer, sometimes writing poems as I’m riding.

I’m not putting a link to it on Amazon because I don’t want people to think I’m just writing about it to make money off people who might buy it. I have no desire to make any money with this blog.

The website for Deskcycle is https://thedeskcycle.com in case you want to read more about it. One other thing. I had bought portable exercise bikes that cost far less than the $149, but they always broke down and never lasted like the Deskcycle.

I had even bought a second Deskcycle three years ago in case this one eventually wore out and broke. Perhaps I’ll never need that back up bike as well as the one I’m using now has lasted.

Janet Murgatroyed, beautiful, blonde-haired 20-years-old,
and a student at the University of Central Lancashire
who worked part-time for the Lancashire police
was out for a night of drinking and merriment in pubs.

After her night out drinking and partying with a female friend, she was seen on CCTV Footage alone and stumbling on her feet.

Then she was seen being chased across the Penwortham Bridge by a man until the man caught her and was crouched over her.

A little later, two brothers walking past the bridge heard what they thought was a woman’s muffled screams under the bridge, presumably Janet Murgatroyed being viciously assaulted and believed raped, since her body was found naked in the Ripple River where she drowned to death.

And it’s tragic and sad that so many young women, like Janet Murgatroyed, are brutally taken out of this world.

Bob Boyd

Though the winds of the years had swept us far away
from one another, I learned two friends I grew up with
are dead.

I found their obituaries with some Internet searches
and was surprised and saddened to see they had died,
one at 78, the other at 79.

It was a reminder that in this life, nothing lasts. Friends who seemed as if forever one day are gone, and one day you are gone too

as well as everything else that existed in your passing life, gone from the world forever.

This is why it makes sense to me to set one’s sights and hopes on what seems a higher permanent world beyond this everchanging, worldly impermanence —

regardless of what you believe that higher permanent world to be.

Bob Boyd

If I believed in a Satan,
it would make it easier
for me to understand
why there is so much
evil and horror upon
this planet.

Then I could reconcile
why children are raped
and murdered and
sold or kidnapped into
child prostitution

why psychopaths and
serial killers seem to
inhabit the planet with
increasing numbers

why serial killers seem
to kill numberless
victims with impunity.

But since I don’t believe
in a horn-headed Satan,
I cannot fathom why a
supposedly loving God
allows all this evil and
horror to happen.

Bob Boyd

March 3rd, 1948 three horse jockeys set out in a 13-foot skiff in the Florida Keys launched from the yacht, Evelyn K.

Friends observed the jockeys from the yacht with powerful binoculars as the skiff sailed off into the sea.

When the three were a mile and a quarter away from the yacht, the sun set and the skiff and the three vanished from sight upon the sea.

A storm had arisen and swept the skiff and the men into a cove and the men and their equipment were gone and never found.

To this day the missing three in the sea remains a mystery.

Bob Boyd

In the fairy tales and the movies, love always had a
happy ending when I was a kid.

Love always won. And you were guaranteed it
would last forever.

You would meet the love of your life, like the prince
and the princess, early on and live happily ever after.

But oh how fraudulent those fairy tales and movies were when the kid grew up and learned the fairy tales and the movies lied.

Bob Boyd

I was listening to Coast to Coast on YouTube today about Bigfoot and sounds he is claimed to make.

The person who recorded the sounds hosts a website called Ontario Sasquatch, and whether a hoaxer or not, he did seem credible.

The sounds were scary and guttural. Female Bigfoot sounds were distinctly female, a little shrill and strange but not scary or guttural.

The person who recorded the sounds said they were “Outside the range of human sound.”

They certainly sounded like nothing a human voice could produce,
the most authentic Bigfoot sounds I’ve ever heard on the Internet.

Alleged Bigfoot recordings I’ve heard on the Internet in the past, sounded like kids pranking Bigfoot believers.

He also said Bigfoot was interdimensional, a theory I find plausible, if Bigfoot is real.

The more I read or listen to about Bigfoot, the more I find people with some credentials claiming he is real, like a forensic scientist, who claims to have had contact with Bigfoot numerous times.

Of course, it could be all fabrications and nonsense, but I find these Bigfoot alleged interactions and sightings fascinating just the same.

Bob Boyd

I’m listening this guy singing about how if you get caught between the moon and NYC, best that you can do is fall in love. I’ve been to NYC and got caught between the moon and it, but best I did was get mugged and propositioned by a woman of the night without even an iota of love in her sex business-seeking heart.

You could say, Um (I know you sometimes start sentences with um), that I probably got caught between a blue moon and NYC, which like blue moon suggests, it wouldn’t guarantee falling in love. And … um … if you were to fall in love between a blue moon and NYC, blue moon could also suggest it would be ill-fated anyway and you would only get a broken heart out of that moonlit moment in NYC.

Now I’m wondering if you fell in love between a half moon or a full moon after being caught between one of those moons in NYC, would those moon sizes have any effect on the quality of falling in love? But best that I can do is forget about this silly speculation. Besides I live in NC, where I’ve never heard of people getting caught between moons and falling in love. People are more down to earth here.

Bob Boyd

Do these people not realize how foolish they look when they rant and act crazy on social media?

Does their self awareness become suspended until legions of people respond negatively to their insane, internet outbursts?

Like the saying some things are best left unsaid, the same should apply to crazed rants on social media.

Bob Boyd

Like bright stars glittering in the night sky
Oh how we glittered in the youth of our lives
and death and old age were for others not us,
and we seemed like immortals forever.
Now we are like dying stars in darkened nights
our dreams are dead and we are dying.

Bob Boyd