Category: Poetry

The strawberry rasbora fish in my fish tank stay at the bottom.
They never come to the top for food, kind of annoys me.
I wanted to see them swimming merrily all over the tank.
But … one of them reminds me of me, the rebel one.
He breaks free from the herd, or should I write school?
He marches to that different beat. He drums his independence
from the restrictions of compliance with the other rasboras.
He swims all over the tank unconcerned about the opinions of
the other rasboras unrestricted by the status quo.
I think the repressed rasboras secretly admire his free spiritedness
but fear censure from the other fish, rasbora public disapproval.
I salute you free spirit rasbora, escapee from the conformity.

Bob Boyd

He was born in a Goldfish Breeder aquarium
On a hot summer day in August of 1922.
Not having the right pedigree he was fated
To be a feeder fish for bigger aquarium fish
Instead of a prized Goldy with the right genes.

Shipped to a pet store, luck came his way
A ten-year-old boy named Jimmy miraculously
Chose him out of hundreds of feeder fish
And gave him the name of Oscar.
Elated, Oscar couldn’t believe his luck.

He blew bubbles, ecstatic to be a pet.
Jimmy kept him in a 2 gallon fish bowl;
It wasn’t the Hilton but was better than
A final home in a bigger fish’s stomach.
But Jimmy didn’t take good care of him.

Oscar died three weeks later, but briefly.
While clinically dead, he left his body
And met angelic goldfish in white light
And saw a glorious goldfish lake and
Felt rapturous bliss all around him.

He didn’t want to return to his dull life
Imprisoned in that dingy, crowded bowl.
But he was told he had to go back
By a resplendent goldfish god emanating
Unconditional love and clothed in white light.

Because Jimmy hadn’t taken good care of him.
Jimmy’s father gave Oscar to a neighbor who
Had a pond full of goldfish that he fed everyday.
Oscar lived twenty happy years in that goldfish pond
Until the goldfish angels came for him in December 1942.

Bob Boyd

3/6/2025
I finish my workout
I feel so goddamn good
Resistances bands and dumbells
Prefer working out at home
My equipment
My time
I feel so goddamn good
It almost amazes me
That when many my age
Are in nursing homes or dead
I’m feeling so goddamn good
I ride my exercise bike
For two hours in front of my computer
I’m writing this poem as I ride
Into the light of another day
That brings me a day closer
To when I take my final ride
Into the great beyond

Bob Boyd

Mary Callahan lived a simple, quiet life.
Never had a lot of money, raised in a poor family,
Good, honest, noble people, supportive and kind.
Never knew the high life and its excesses,
Didn’t desire extravagances or expensive things.
Never cared for overpriced, fancy restaurants,
Content with inexpensive ones minus the glitz.
Never compromised her praiseworthy ethics,
Trustworthy in her work, true in her love.
Never cheated on her devoted, faithful husband,
Married at 17, kept her vows, sacred to her.
Never paid attention when told young love doesn’t last,
Stayed married to her husband until he died at age 55.
Never married or went with another man after he died,
Believed she’d be with her husband when she passed away.
Never missed a Sunday church service,
Brought food and joy to homebound church members.
Never shirked family responsibilities,
Raised her dead daughter’s child, worked two jobs to do it,
A true and humble high value woman.

Bob Boyd

A sweet college girl
pretty and quite smart
she got drunk at a bar
one night and became
separated from her
college friends

how that happened
to this day is a
mystery

maybe her friends
were too drunk to
care or notice her
absence from them

I only know when
she stumbled out
of the bar at 2:30 am
she was never seen
again until her violated
remains were found
hidden in some tall
grass on the side
of a lone highway

I read the story in
the news and see
a photo of her

maybe it’s foolish
maybe it’s futile
but I look look into
her eyes in the photo
and say I’m sorry
you went out that
horrible way

and I pray to God
that she’s in a place
where it won’t matter
that she died so young
in such a horrible way

and I wonder why in a
world supposedly
under a loving God
so many horrible and
evil things keep
happening

Bob Boyd

I hear the werewolf howling in my backyard
under the foreboding night’s full moon.
His blood curdling howls so terrifying my body
begins to shake, goosebumps rise on my skin,
the curly hair on my head stands straight up.
And I thank the Lord above that my brother
the loopy loup-garou only wants some
of his favorite midnight snack, Kibbles n’ Bits,
and isn’t about to dismember me.

Bob Boyd

She was brought up in a religious family;
some of her family members were high
up in the mega church they belonged to.

She met a nice Christian man, fell in love
with him, and they married.

After they married, she got a job as a
secretary in a Christian college and
met a charming, handsome young
Christian student there.

Surprisingly, given her longstanding
Christian faith, an affair ensued with
the young Christian student.

One day her Christian student lover
said to her, “Why don’t you get a divorce?”

She replied, “Oh no, we don’t get divorced
in my church, but if he were to die ….”

Shockingly, given the student was a Christian,
he murdered her husband for her, so they
could be together and marry someday.

The police never found them out, and, maybe
because they couldn’t live with their shared
infamy, they broke up after the murder.

Years later, she was married to a dentist
and had twin kids. He finished his degree
at the college where they met and went on
to higher studies at another college.

One day the police decided to open the
cold case of her husband’s murder, maybe
with a new investigator who just wanted to
get his bearings on the case.

When the police found her home and knocked on
her front door and identified themselves,
though she wasn’t a suspect, she thought
she was and confessed everything to them.

I wondered how she and her student lover
could even consider such a murderous sin.
Then I thought maybe they were of the belief
that once saved by Jesus always saved.

Or maybe they believed that
they’d be forgiven if they confessed their
sin and begged Christ for forgiveness
their unholy act would be forgiven.

Whatever their thinking, it has always
baffled me that those two young Christians
could be so diabolical as to concoct
such an evil plan and go through with it.

Bob Boyd

The witness was so cocky he told the police he
didn’t need any protection in the city of Woburn, Mass.
where had consented to tell what he knew in a court of law
about a gang’s illegal activities in the north of the city.

Shortly after that, he vanished from sight,
and the police had no clues to where he had gone.
They suspected the worst, and they were right
when they found his arm in a city dump.

They knew that the gang in the north of the city
had eliminated the star witness in their case,
but they had no evidence to prove what they knew,
and the murder of the cocky witness was never solved.

Bob Boyd

I cannot imagine
a woman
or a man
psychopath born
psychopath dead
cast into the
fires of Hell
by a loving
reasonable God.

If you believe
I’m wrong
how can you
account for a
God who’d send
a psychopath
into the world
without heaven’s hope?

Bob Boyd

I couldn’t watch when they lowered your little coffin
In the ground at that Philippines cemetery in Davao
I couldn’t watch your six years of challenged life ended that way.
I just couldn’t bear it. I was holding back a thousand tears.
My heart was breaking with the worst heartaches of my life.
I had to stay in the background on that saddest of sad days.

I couldn’t get up close and watch that coffin lowered in the ground
With you such a little child, who never had a chance in life, dead in it.

Your mother was able to stand there and watch
God bless her, I don’t know how.

Born with water on the brain, you never had a chance.
No playgrounds, no schools, no friends, no high school
No girlfriends, no proms, no jobs, no love life, nothing.
You couldn’t walk or talk and your six years spent helpless in a bed, Seemingly oblivious to the world and your surroundings.

How my heart grieved for you, even though you weren’t my son.
I hope to see you in the afterlife, healed, happy and walking and talking.

And I hope you got a reward in the higher life for how
Shortchanged you were in this life.
Breaks my heart you didn’t have a better life.

Bob Boyd

When I first heard about soulmates,
I fell in love with the romantic idea
of finding the perfect one
that you would be with forever.

Like I’m sure many have found out,
finding a soulmate eludes many,
as it has me.

Then I came up with the thought,
perhaps a foolish crazy notion,
that maybe people who don’t find
their soulmates in this life
find them in the afterlife.

Related to that notion, I once read
a title of a man’s near death experience:
He Met His Soulmate in the Afterlife.

I didn’t believe it. I didn’t read it.
I felt it was contrived, and it was
the first NDE I’ve ever heard of,
after reading and listening to many,
of anyone meeting a soulmate while
clinically dead temporarily.

I have read of deathbed visions
where a spouse sees the deceased
spouse waiting for her or him
in the white light of the afterlife.

That gave me a little hope of
the possibility of enduring
romantic love in an everlasting
afterlife.

I’m probably mistaken in thinking
or wishing, that maybe, just maybe
we all find our soulmates
in the afterlife.

And it surprises me that as an old
man now, I still think of such
silly and romantic things,
but perhaps the saying is true,
there’s no fool like an old fool.

But wouldn’t it be heavenly if
my foolish romantic notion were
true, and we all found our soulmates
in the afterlife. And those that
found their soulmates in this life
would be reunited forever there too.

I find that more satisfying, like
a wonderful fairy tale ending, than
the thought of romantic love
being merely a temporary condition
limited to a brief, earthly life

Bob Boyd

I’m here because you probably
never heard of me.

In a book that hosts a single
poem of mine

it is written I lived around 1070
and was born in the Sung
capital of Kaifeng
and was an official
in the provinces.

It also reads “I had a brief
moment of fame in
literary circles.”

The reason the moment
was brief is because
I didn’t care about worldly fame.
I knew it was fleeting and
eventually we all
fade into obscurity.

And though I wrote poems
all my life, I didn’t try to
gain public recognition
for any of them.

I knew that even if I
did gain mountains of
recognition and fame
those things never endure

I was more interested
in embracing the Tao
and achieving immortality.

Long ago I read
it was better to
have loved and lost
than to never have loved at all

As a loser at love
I agree with that
and my heart goes out
to the many people
in this world who have
never had a chance to
win or lose at love

who pined for romantic love
all their lives
who saw so many others have it
in poems, books, movies
and in real life

but never them
who lost at finding the love
they never had

Bob Boyd

She was an entertainer and an extrovert
He was a supportive but homebody husband.
Two entirely different spouses, but unlike many
maybe most, they made their marriage work.

He passed away recently after a long life
with a famous and beautiful talented wife.
I hope she is able to join him in the afterlife
and continue their marriage forever there.

In high school my dream was to have what
they had, but high school dreams are often
only teenage fantasies that never become
realized in the grown up realities of real life.

Bob Boyd

Just like with the cults
some people are brainwashed
to the end.

Worst case, the Nazis.
Lesser contenders, religion
and politics.

Closer to worst, needless
wars and the people of
other countries portrayed
as evil enemies

even though those people
are pretty much like us
just wanting peaceful
happy lives

unless they become like
mindless zombies and
it’s Heil Whoever controls
their propagandized and
my country right or wrong
minds. And to their deaths
or his or her deaths they
remain the puppets
of their uber allis masters.

Bob Boyd

When I was 16 and gotten beaten up badly in two fights,
my mother, a Celtic wicca of sorts made me a Celtic Shield Knot Talisman to protect and strengthen me.

And she said now you won’t lose anymore fights. Even bullies won’t be able to beat you up.

Maybe it was the power of belief, but she was
right. After I wore the talisman around my neck,
I fought the two bullies who had beaten me up
at the same time and easily kicked the crap out of them.

But when I came up against a bully named
Casey O’Reilly, he dropped me with a single
punch. We made friends after that and he
confided in me that he had a Celtic Shield
Knot Talisman too.

But his had a preserved 4 leaf clover in the center of it,
which I concluded must have given him more luck in the fight with me.

Me and Casey became best buddies after that.
When we graduated from high school
Casey joined the Marines. I joined the Air Force.

Casey got sent to Viet Nam. I got sent to Germany.
I came back untouched by war, never in any combat.
Casey came back in a body bag despite
his 4 leaf clover Celtic Shield Knot Talisman.

To this day I don’t know what went wrong,
unless the Viet Cong who shot him to death
had one of those powerful Vietnamese
Numismatic Talismans.

Bob Boyd

guys who fell in love with her
always died young

I was old
so I thought I was safe
until our first kiss
when I felt woozy
but I shrugged it off
as just the effects
of her mind blowing
spellbinding kiss

not being superstitious
I didn’t believe
loving her would
doom me to the
grave

two months later
when I told her
I loved her
while eating
pancakes at
an IHOP restaurant
on Westover Terrace
in Greensboro, NC

(I know. Not exactly
an ideal romantic
setting
but I had to go
with the feeling
then and there
when it hit me
harder than
a Cupid arrow
to the heart)

I didn’t die
life was still good
and I was very
very alive
until I drove home
and felt a searing pain
in my chest and sped
to Moses Cone
hospital ER and
collapsed clinically
dead

I had an NDE
saw God and
he blessed me
and said don’t
eat so much salt
and told me I wasn’t
totally dead

I came to on the
exam table hearing
the invasive thuds
of a doctor who
reminded me of
Lon Chaney
slamming defibrillator
paddles on my
heaving chest

When I was fully
recovered and
discharged
from the hospital
my first thought
was maybe Miralda
was right

but not being
superstitious
I didn’t have
a fright and I’m
going to take
another shot at
being with her
tonight

and if I never
write another
poem here
you’ll know
Mirelda
was right

Bob Boyd

He saw the coffee cup
with the inverted pentagram on it
in the Goodwill thrift store
and though he didn’t know the meaning
of the inverted pentagram
he thought it looked cool on the cup

unlike the regular pentagram
he didn’t know the upside down one
was associated with evil

nor did he know the former owner
of the cup was a satanist who
practiced the dark arts
and put an evil spell on
the inverted pentagram cup

so he thought the cup was
a unique find at a great price
until he drank his first cup
of coffee in it and fell asleep

and had a nightmare of
a demon with a goat’s head
right before he was dead

Bob Boyd

The Canadian geese
flying in V’s
always amaze me
when I’ve seen
them flying in formation

and I wonder how they know
how to fly in that beautiful V

and which goose is appointed
to be at the point of the V

and if they change positions
from one of the geeze
on the sides of the V
to the point from time
to time

I read the purpose
of the point
of the V shape
the first goose
is to create
an updraft
to reduce wind
resistance for
the rest of
the flying V flock

which enables
the geeze
to fly longer
with less effort

and I just learned
that the geese
do change positions
each taking
the point to reduce
tiredness
among the flock

it amazes me these birds
somehow have that
teamwork intelligence
and it makes me
like them
even more

Bob Boyd

Edison Lighthouse song, Love Grows
(Where my Rosemary Goes) 1970.
Over 18 million hits on YouTube. Lucky fellas.
Magical, mystical song still popular with those
that hear it. And wow that Rosemary, maybe
ethereal, surely surreal, never forget her.
One in a million, mysterious goddess among women.
Every young man’s dream, greatest fantasy female
ever, song is so clever, makes you believe Rosemary’s
really a goddess, maybe she was. Maybe she still is.
O Rosemary, beautiful, mind blowing, ultimate,
should have been the love of my life, woman,
why did I never meet an amazing, magical,
enchanting woman like you? And like the song says,
“I would have loved you endlessly.”
But woe upon woes, you never existed except
in that beautiful make believe tribute song,
which I will always love, never tire of,
no matter how many times I hear it.
Listening to it now. Love grows….

Bob Boyd