Category: Poetry

Never go to doctors
They’ll find something wrong with you
Stay away and you won’t get sick or die
For example
My granny was the healthiest granny on the planet
Bench pressed 200 pounds, repeatedly
Squatted with 300 pounds, easily
Ran triathlon marathons, effortlessly
Kicked the crap out of a psycho subway pusher in NYC

All that, until she saw a geriatrics quack
A wacko psycho doctor of death
He diagnosed her with the big C
Placebo screwed her with a BS death knell
Stage 4, three months to live, he claimed sadistically

Three anxiety-driven, brainwashed months later
granny couldn’t bench or squat a mere 100 pounds
or even run twenty yards

Then granny was stone cold expired,
waked and buried at Bellevue Cemetery
Don’t ask me about the costs

In denial about my sweet granny’s passing,
vowed to find a way to bring her back.
Prayed to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
and Catholic saints of impossible causes
Didn’t work

Because Jesus came back successfully,
thought maybe he’d share
his secret resurrection formula
and give a dead granny some love
Didn’t work

Granny remained unresurrected
Exasperated and driven to near madness
I robbed granny out of her grave
and tried to Frankenstein her back to life
Bound her to a metal table
Rigged a lightning rod to it
A thunderstorm raged and rumbled
Lightning flashed and crackled
Struck her corpse, made it sizzle
Didn’t work

Lightning only barbequed her body
Or cooked it, not sure which
Brainstormed a better idea
Jump started her like a dead car battery
Problem solved, kinda
Granny is up and running
and chasing me around my house
alive and electrically zombified.

Bob Boyd

Somehow, some way, in the seventies
a friend and I found ourselves
in a room with a spaced out pretty
hippie flower girl, who reminded me
of the song, I Love The Flower Girl.

I can’t remember the
how of that situation,
how we got there or
what city we were in
I’m thinking Boston.
My brain was too dumbed
down by Budweiser beer,
back in my wasted and
excessive drinking days
before the k energy took all
that irrevocably away.

I do remember I sensed
my friend was poised to
try to take advantage of her
in her vulnerable,
spaced out state.

Despite my beer-clouded
brain then, I remember telling
her I would protect her.

My friend, acting like a
POS, touched her leg and
she freaked out and
ran to me.

We talked for awhile
and seemed to have the
possibility of starting a
romance despite the
fact we were both blitzed.

And we decided to meet
in a park the next day,
like the Flower Girl song
where the guy sees the
flower girl sitting in the park

except she was a no show,
which might have been
for the absolute best

even though she rained on
my flower girl song dream.

But thinking of what might
have been and listening to
that upbeat song right now
makes me surprisingly happy,
and for a moment, I feel like
I’m back in my twenties,
like the way writing poetry
often makes me feel.

Bob Boyd

I read in SciTechDaily that now we
have to worry about microplastics in our brains.

I had read about loads of microplastics in honey and
decided to refrain from eating it, just in case.

Supposedly we have “a plastic spoon’s” worth
of microplastics in our brains.

It gets far worse.

According to recent research people with
dementia have higher levels of microplastics
in their brains

suggesting that more of us could get
dementia due to our microplastics-ridden
gray matter.

Some sources of this brain plastics problem
are bottled water, plastic tea bags, and plastic
food storage.

This life is like a game of dodging hundreds of
poison darts, some you don’t even see coming at you.

Maybe like insecticide resistance that some insects
have developed against DDT, humans will develop
resistance to microplastics and render it harmless
to them.

Or, perhaps, a pill or a supplement will be developed
to cleanse our brains free of microplastics

until the next menace to our existence takes center
stage in making us sick or killing us.

And as I ponder this microplastics menace,
I’m reminded of the saying, “Ignorance is bliss,”
and I think maybe being blissfully ignorant of
the dangers that assail our health has some
merit.

At least that way, you won’t have to spend
even an iota of time worrying about dreadful
things that might come your way.

Bob Boyd

He studied Zen Buddhism.
Practiced zazen every day.
Chanted sutras every night.
Began meditating too much,
Addicted to the daily highs.
Developed Zen sickness
And lost his mortal mind.
Now imprisoned in an
Asylum for the insane.
Walks like a zombie,
His eyes forever glazed
And mumbles fragments of sutras
Inside his disordered head.

Bob Boyd

A stink bug just flew on my computer screen.
though they’re grotesque looking, I like them.
but I must admit the first time I saw one
It looked so bizarre it startled me,
wondering if it was harmful and would sting or bite.

Rarely had I seen a weirder looking bug.
It had kind of a threatening don’t touch me look.
We don’t have them where I’m originally from,
just outside of Boston, MA in the milder burbs.

Despite not knowing if it was harmful,
I couldn’t kill it, just coaxed it onto a tissue
and walked it outside my apartment
into the freedom of a warm summer’s night.

After I learned stink bugs were harmless,
I grew to like them, as I like the one
that just soared off my computer, tiny wings flapping,
airborne for a few seconds in lamp lit skies,
and it landed on a runway somewhere behind me.
In a little while he might land on me.

Maybe he’ll sit on my shoulder like a best pal
and watch YouTube videos with me and listen to 30s music
and tearfully tell me how he can’t meet any female stink bugs online.
I’ll say I feel your pain, been there with female women. Never going back.

Maybe after he pours out his love life miseries
and cries for a while on my supportive shoulder,
I’ll tell him he’s a handsome enough stink bug
to find a decent and beautiful female stink bug
who will be his true love and treat him like a prince among stink bugs.

And maybe I’ll adopt him as an exotic pet.
I wouldn’t tether him to a restraining leash
or stick him in a four-sided oppressive aquarium,
or imprison him in a soul crushing, miniature cage;
that is if stink bugs have souls, which I imagine they do.

But mercy me I don’t know what I’d feed him,
and I doubt I’d find stink bug food at PetSmart.
I could probably find him some food on Amazon,
hopefully with a five gold stars rating
and next day shipping between 4 and 8am.

I hate that it has such an undignified, unfitting name.
I would have jazzed the name up with some Latin,
like Incredibilis Insectum or maybe something more relatable like Super Cool Bug or Bug That Only Stinks If You Mess With It.

And by the way, stink bugs only stink If you
harm or try to crush them to death,
as if harmed or dead they get the final say.

Bob Boyd

In the past I’ve researched music as far back as
I could find it on the Internet.

And I’ve always held that a good song is a good song
no matter if it is current or hundreds of years old.

In those explorations I became enamored with 30s music, mostly because of the lyrics, often romantic.

Some of those songs I researched the history on, like the dance hall girl song, 10 Cents A Dance.

And, unknown to me, I learned many women earned their living dancing for money with men in dance halls in the 20s and 30s.

And they called these women taxi-dancers who worked in Taxi Dance Halls where men bought tickets to

twirl around dance halls with these charming and adept at dancing young women.

I also learned some objected to these dance halls and considered dancing for money akin to a lesser form of prostitution

and tried to offer the taxi-dancers what they felt were more respectable jobs.

But the problem was these jobs were mostly unappealing and paid far less money.

Here are the lyrics to Ten Cents A Dance with the song linked in the title:

Ten Cents a Dance
Ruth Etting

I work at the Palace Ballroom, but,
gee that Palace is cheap;
When I get back to my chilly hall room
I’m much too tired to sleep.
I’m one of those lady teachers,
a beautiful hostess, you know,
the kind the Palace features
for only a dime a throw.

Ten cents a dance
that’s what they pay me,
gosh, how they weigh me down!
Ten cents a dance
pansies and rough guys,
tough guys who tear my gown!
Seven to midnight I hear drums.
Loudly the saxophone blows.
Trumpets are tearing my eardrums.
Customers crush my toes.
Sometime I think
I’ve found my hero,
but it’s a queer romance.
All that you need is a ticket,
Come on, big boy, ten cents a dance.

Fighters and sailors and bowlegged tailors
can pay for their ticket and rent me!
Butchers and barbers and rats from the harbors
are sweethearts my good luck has sent me.
Though I’ve a chorus of elderly beaux,
stockings are porous with holes at the toes.
I’m here till closing time,
Dance and be merry, it’s only a dime.

Sometime I think
I’ve found my hero,
But it’s a queer romance.
All that you need is a ticket.
Come on, big boy, ten cents a dance.

Written by: Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart
Album: Presenting Ruth Etting
Released: 1926
Lyrics provided by Musixmatch

Many have been trying been to unravel
the Bigfoot mystery for many years,
seemingly with no solid proofs
of this mysterious creatures
existence.

As an armchair speculator,
I’ve come to the conclusion
that Bigfoot is interdimensional
since he’s uncannily elusive and
vanishes when scared hunters
take frightened shots at him.

And that could explain why there
are no corpses or scat left behind
in the 75,000 alleged sightings of him.

Imagine if Bigfoot were interdimensional
and more evolved than us.

Imagine if Bigfoot lived in a
Shangri La-like dimension
and when not playing hide seek
with astonished humans to prank
them and enjoy a few chuckles
between his vanishing acts and
his forays into our material world
and whatever else preoccupies
his transcendent existence.

Imagine if Bigfoot were a perennial
free spirit living his best life
leapfrogging from one dimension
to another, carefree and liberated
from the constraints and worries
of lesser, restricted human lives.

Bob Boyd

While having an otherwise peaceful sleep
a night hag froze and frightened him.

Trapped, unable to move, he tried to
panic himself into the waking state.

He failed as the night hag became
more menacing and drew closer
to him.

To make things worse, the night hag
looked exactly like his dead ex-wife.

Then an idea popped into his mind
and he mentally made
the sign of the cross.

And poof, the night hag aka his ex
dissolved back into the darkness
and he woke up and

gave his wife’s bullet-ridden corpse
a proper burial from the freezer
in his ceiler to a secret plot
hidden behind some flowers
in their backyard.

Bob Boyd

The Hare Krishnas say Krishnaloka is where you
Need to go after you die, if you can get there.
It takes a lot of chanting Hare Krishnas to get there
And probably the right incarnation and the right karma.

Christians say heaven with Jesus is where you
Need to go after you die, if you can get there,
If you can avoid the snares of Satan’s hell
And probably pray enough and be good enough.

Imagine if they were both right. Imagine if
There were multiple afterlife paradises
Depending on what religion or path you followed.

Imagine if the non-dualists were right, and
You had to get beyond all these dualities
And merge into the infinite Oneness.

Bob Boyd

I hear the werewolf howling at my door
I yell back at her, “I can’t do this anymore.”
I’m not terrified as I should be because
Even though she’s a werewolf tonight,
Even though she’s a horrifying beast,
She still loves and respects me
And won’t break in and kill me.
I thought my total love for her
Was more than strong enough
To face the worst of challenges.
But after she got bit by a werewolf
And became a moon-triggered monster
And killed seven people and a little girl
I could no longer be yoked to her.
She asked me to become like her
To ensure we’d always be together.
But though I still loved her despite
The monster she had become,
I had to get away from her
And her killing sprees.
But she’s not giving up
On me or our love,
And she visits me
Every full moon night.

Bob Boyd

The singer in the song I’m listening to
is singing about how he “can’t fight
this feeling anymore” because he,
for whatever reasons, is fighting
against falling in love.

I conjecture that maybe he’s been
hurt one time too many or fears
losing what he sees as a loss
of his freedom.

Whatever the case that song,
Can’t Fight This Feeling by
REO Speedway is one of
my all time favorites

Then he sings that the woman
he is becoming increasingly enamored
with is like a candle in the window
in what seems like his toughest times.

And I realize I’ve forgotten about
fighting those feelings, as if they’re
dead, waked, and buried in a
graveyard of forgotten memories
in the depths of this old man’s head.

But I let those feelings pass by
in the rivers of thoughts and
speculations that flow
profusely through my ever
thinking and imaginative mind.

And I finish this poem listening to
another guy singing about
how he “just doesn’t want
to be lonely.”

Bob Boyd

From a Beautiful Actress to an Unrecognizable Homeless Woman

I read in the news about this woman who had
been a beautiful actress in a popular tv show,

but now roams the streets homeless, disheveled
and pushing a shopping cart full of items
she finds in dumpsters.

And I wonder what caused her to fall so hard.
I think in the news the fall was due to drugs,

but I have to wonder if a mental health issue
led to her awful demise along with the drugs.

It concerns me that there seems to be
no help for her. No one to intervene and
save her from the streets

and the horrible things that could happen
to her in such a vulnerable state,
and it saddens me to see she has
such a tragic, horrible fate
and seems totally abandoned.

I guess it comes down to free will
even if your will is compromised
and you’re putting yourself in jeopardy.

I find that heartbreakingly sad
and I wish I could wave a magic wand
and save her and probably thousands
upon thousands of others from
being seemingly abandoned in the streets.

Bob Boyd

I was like the Prince of Darkness in a preacher’s robe,
A traveling preacher in the northeast of America.
I did the Lord’s work seven days a week,
Turning lost souls into believers,
Saved them all for the glory of God.
I did the Devil’s work at other times,
stabbing many unwary women to death.

I brought hundreds of people to God,
Ended fifty women’s lives for the Devil.
I had no problem with the contradictory life.
My conscience didn’t care about the infamy.
I was a clever fiend, never got caught,
And I savored all those sweet kills,
Starting with neighbors’ pets as a child.

I died of a massive heart attack in 1873,
Which was ironic, heartless as I was.

When I knocked on heaven’s door
I thought God would forgive my murderous sins
Because of all those lost souls I saved for him.
And after all, I reasoned, he had made
Me into the half holy half unholy thing,
Preacher monster killer that I was.

But nobody answered heaven’s door
Even though disembodied I’d changed.
I lost my compulsion to sinfully kill.
The preacher in me took completely over.
And even though I worked for Satan some,
I didn’t want to go to his world of torments.

So in my ghostly form I roam the world
From church to church praying and confessing
With the hope of enough sincere atonement
Heaven’s door will eventually open to me.

Bob Boyd

Jackson Brown’s Song, “Somebody’s Baby” and You

“Well, just look at that girl with the light coming up in her eyes.”
(From the song Somebody’s Baby, sung by Jackson Brown, 1982)

If you are a woman reading this poem here and now,
whether you are seventeen or seventy-seven, or older,
this heartfelt poem is dedicated to you along with
the song lyric about the lights coming up in her eyes.
I believe no matter your age or your trials or your situations those wondrous womanly lights are still coming up in you.

And if you’re seventy-seven, gray-haired, or older,
and those lights are no longer shining as bright as they were in your younger seasons and yesteryears —

I’ve no doubt those lights are still in you and will brighten again with your ultimate liberation into the sunlit afterlife where you will be born anew, resplendently blooming, like sunflowers reborn gloriously in the springtime sunshine

And if you are seventeen, oh how those lights shine in your eyes.
Oh how they are so amazingly fresh and radiantly bright.
I hope no matter what you face in this uncertain, complicated life those lights never go out and keep coming up in you.

Bob Boyd

Christos.
The omnipresent.
The omniscient.
The omnipotent.
The unfathomable.
At the core of everything, the planets, the cosmos
The fields, the flowers, the streams,
The rivers, the seas, the skies, the clouds
In all things, in all creatures
In this life, in the next
In death, you will see Christos
White Light brighter
Than the blazing sun
Unconditional Love beyond
Any love you ever experienced
Any love you could ever imagine
The earthbound life you leave
Will dissolve blissfully
In the everlasting brilliance
Of His infinite love
For you and for all creation
In your real home
The eternally blissful
Presence of Christos.
The omnipresent.
The omniscient.
The omnipotent.
The unfathomable.

Bob Boyd

If I could have a
face to face
with God, these
are some of the
questions I’d ask
Him:

Why are some
born into the world
fated with
tormented lives
of mental illness?

Why are some
children barely
out of the womb
stricken with
cancer?

Why do we have
to have
psychopaths and
sociopaths in
this world?

Why wars
murders galore
rapists and
pedophiles
and evil
everywhere?

And why did a
beautiful wife
and mother in
Kentucky her arms
and legs cut off from
a kidney infection
have to suffer such
a horrible fate?

And how could
this inspirational
woman say, “If one
person can see
God from all of this,
that made it all
worth it”?

Then I’d say
forget about the
questions
pray make me
as saintly as she.

Bob Boyd

I must have been in my late twenties or early thirties
strolling in Harvard Square in Massachusetts.
I saw a flyer for a group meditation open to the public
at Harvard U. at 7 pm on a Thursday night.

A fervent seeker with years of meditation experience
and spiritual experiences, well read on various
eastern and western spiritual paths, I had to attend
that group meditation. I had to see what it was all about.

I met a tall blond-haired guy there named Woody, a kindred soul. I said, “Where is the guru?” He said, “He’s in Europe, but at 7 pm he will meditate on us and you will feel his powerful presence.”

I looked at the guru’s photo between two flickering candles. His mystical eyes suggested he was in an enlightened state of consciousness.

But, I wondered if anything would happen at 7 pm, or if it was all just a bogus power of suggestion and nothing more.

The guru was punctual. At 7 pm KABOOM! the room got blasted with phenomenal, powerful beyond belief, spiritual energy. I was blitzed out and blown away from the cosmic energy lighting up the room.

I’d felt this kind of a guru’s spiritual energy before. In Hinduism it’s called the guru’s darshan, but this was something more. This was like something utterly miraculous.

His followers at the group meditation told me their guru meditated on them at night and they’d awake feeling his spiritual energy blasting into them.

The purpose of the powerful spiritual energy infusions was to aid them in their quest to attain sat chit ananda, eternal bliss consciousness, courtesy of the guru’s uber potent spiritual energy transmissions.

I attended those group meditations a few more times, the results the same, my consciousness elevated into the stratosphere.

I brought friends there who had never meditated. They got blissed out too.

I meditated on the guru’s photo once and saw him in a dream where he tapped me on the head, as if he were anointing me to become a student of his.

I never became a follower of this guru, which may surprise you given the phenomenal, transcendent experiences I had at those group meditations.

His path required celibacy and as a romantic, I felt that deprivation was entirely unnecessary and possibly harmful.

Ironically, years later, that guru became enmeshed in sexual scandals, diddling female followers, disgracing himself, as many of those gurus from the east did so wantonly and surprisingly.

I remember reading in their Vedas something like this: “Sin will avoid an enlightened being, like deer avoid a burning mountain top.”

Based on the actions of many allegedly enlightened gurus, this just wasn’t true or many of them, though powerful, were either unenlightened or tragically flawed despite their higher states of consciousness. Some of them acted like full-blown lunatics. Think cults.

After reading and hearing about so many of these gurus falling like disembodied flies from grace, I eventually left the east and came to believe a single act of compassion is more important than most of the spiritual experiences on the planet, as I still believe decades later and to this very day, this very moment.

Bob Boyd

I used to be a Bear Whisperer, one of the best
I charmed bears from coast to coast
Just a well-timed whisper or two
And like lions lying down with lambs
Ferocious Bears became teddy bears.
My fame reached almost everywhere;
On radio and TV shows a regular guest.

Became a traveling international celeb
Even tamed exotic Scandinavian bears
In Siberia whispered to Russian ones.
Some said the fame spread to my head
And I became too bigheaded for my own good.

A Ursus americanus in the Rocky Mountains
Growled, charged, and like a wrestling pro
Clotheslined me to the hard mountain ground
And nearly made me his bear whispering dinner.
A park ranger’s warning shot and he sped.

Wasn’t a rookie near-fatal fault on my part.
The bear was hearing impaired and
I couldn’t whisper sign language.

Bob Boyd

A troublemaker, he hated America, and
in his turbulent college days started
protested against its policies in the streets
despite living a privileged free world life
and spoiled by his wealthy parents.

Fed up, done with, capitalistic America,
he left the county when a politician
he hated got voted president.

Disgusted, he renounced America.
As a dissident, moved to Thailand
for what he felt was a paradise with
exciting bars full of hot, exotic women
and nothing to get outraged about.

After living there a year, in a crowded bar
he got recklessly drunk and said to some
Thais that he thought the king of Thailand
was a pompous jackass who just sucked
on the tit of taxpayer money.

The next day he got arrested for
Article 112, Lese-majeste, and now
he sits in a Thai prison for twenty
years for foolishly insulting their king.

Bob Boyd

She said what crawled up his butt and died
But what crawled up his butt was still alive
when he learned she had committed a faux pas suicide
by cheating on him with one Mr. Dobson
who used to live in the apartment next to theirs
until he unexpectedly moved to the Glenview cemetery
where she was soon to take up residence
after the police found her corpse with fifty stab wounds
and didn’t find her person of interest psycho husband
until he turned up dead with a bullet through his head,
a self inflicted Smith&Wesson suicide on highway 666.

Bob Boyd