Category: Poetry

I see a fly going about his business
ignoring me

until I try to swat him and he
escapes me

I wonder if other then when I
attack him

if he has any kind of awareness
of me

I wonder if his lifespan of 50 days is like
my 79

I just read to my surprise that a fly has
a brain

Now I wonder if a fly is smarter than humans who do
stupid things

Bob Boyd

I decided I didn’t want her complications,
Despite that we had so much in common.
Despite that she was so damn good in bed.
But what the hell is a lot in common
and good in bed lovemaking skills
when she made me miserably unhappy?
Better being without her complications
that caused me so much damn drama.
Better living a peaceful uncomplicated life.

Bob Boyd

He loved the women of the night.
He felt the transactions were fair.
He got what he wanted.
They got well compensated.
He said he didn’t want the drama
and the potential disappointments,
and the always possible heartaches
in normal relationships with women.
In a way, he might have had a point.
But if he had taken the risk and
invested in a normal relationship,
he might have found a loving wife
instead of unromantic couplings
minus caring and enduring love.

Bob Boyd

He told me you have to choose a woman
like you’d choose a profitable stock.
Forget about true love
that won’t help with the bottom line
of living large and flush with cash.
Inwardly I scoffed at his avarice
and chose a sweet woman and true love.
He chose a women with an inheritance
As if there were no justice in this world,
his marriage lasted all his greedy life.
Mine fizzled out in less than a year.

Bob Boyd

She looked so uniquely nice
in her elaborate clothes
her unique fashion sense
but nothing on earth
could ever compare
to how beautiful she looked
in her natural au natural

Bob Boyd

Remembering Sandra Lisacki today
and how beautiful she looked
back in high school gracing the corridors
with her stunning and exotic looks,
holding her books in her arms,
looking so amazingly lovely.
Her beautiful brown eyes
and black hair left me practically breathless.

Alas, I wish I could have met her in person
and been lucky enough to have gone out with her.
I wish I could have been that blessed.
Instead I never approached her,
never got to know her.

Perhaps feeling unworthy of her.
And asking her out might have been
as futile as an undeserving mortal
asking out a heavenly goddess.

And back then to me she was
like a goddess, and I will never forget
how incomparably beautiful she looked
in the Woburn High Class of 1964.
I hope she is still alive. She’d be 78
now I think. I hope she had a happy life.

Bob Boyd

the churches went woke
forgot about real religion
focused more on politics
and so-called social justice
than on their religious roots

services and sermons
became boringly bland
and jesus was forgotten
and his spirit left them

even he could not stand
their desecrations of his
message of forgiveness
and unconditional love

bob boyd

wrote a bestseller about it
he’d been abducted by aliens
and learned many things about them
that he shared with his readers
who gushed over the revelations
he became like a celebrity
garnered millions of fans
made tons of money
did slews of interviews
poster boy for ufologists
all of it a sweet gig for him
all of it a blatant hoax

bob boyd

he was trouble in high school,
kicked out of it many times
upset teachers in classrooms
always creating disturbances
the bane of all those in charge
not surprising, since he
got many beatings at home.

bob boyd

You can keep your celebratory status.
Like anything else in life, it has its costs.
The price for all that attention
is the loss of your public freedom
and being bothered by paparazzi
and often reporters everywhere you go
and the risk of being quoted or
misquoted on something you said.
Screw all that attention, say I.
It just isn’t worth it to me in the end.
Although some celebs seem
to handle it incredibly well.

Bob Boyd

Supposedly an ant just dies
and has no heaven or
nirvana.

Where privileged humans
get the perks of living
cushy, eternal lives.

I find that discriminatory
to the little four-leggeds,
who according to research
have more group smarts
than humans.

But maybe their salvation
is eventually assured
through the transmigration
of souls from one life to
another.

In other words, today an ant
tomorrow a dog. Lives later
a privileged human on the
track of a nirvana or a
heaven.

But still … why the wait?
Why can’t ants be on the
fast track to eternal bliss
instead of having to
make their bones life
after life.

That is, If the Hindu
take on the scheme
of things is unerringly
and theologically right.

Bob Boyd

She told him she loved him.
He said he loved her too.
Marriage and nuptial bliss
followed.

All was good for three years.
Then the love and the bliss
began to unexpectedly
wan and wither away.

And like so many other loves
the once soulmates
ended the love and the bliss
hatefully in a divorce court.

Bob Boyd

Once upon a time monks allowed women
to visit Mount Athos.

But the monks became too distracted
as non-monkish men would as well.

I can understand this as an old, womanless recluse:
Women distract me too.

But not as much as they must have havoced
the minds and the holy intentions of celibate monks.

Though sometimes when I venture of of my quasi monastic solitude
and see women in grocery and department stores

I find myself faced with the distractions of all the lovely women
blooming in the aisles and at the checkout counters

I begin remembering when I was young and with women
and how wonderful and magical my world was then.

For awhile, I pine over being without one of those beautiful distractions
and briefly wish I had one now despite being old and living like a monk.

Bob Boyd

People have never been able
to get along for long
nationally or globally.

Wars keep happening.
Some countries can’t coexist in peace
Crimes still surge. Hate still rages.

Jails are still filled to capacity
with every imaginable kind of offender.
Murders happen everywhere everyday.

What a sad statement to the progress
and the evolution of the human race
that may be racing to its dissolution.

It’s like a delinquent, troublesome schoolkid
who sheepishly comes home
with all F’s on his shameful report card.

Bob Boyd

He visited the town he grew up in.
He knew nobody there.
Everything had changed
all the old stores were gone
The places had been rearranged.
All the people he knew had died
or move somewhere far away.
They’d been replaced with
many people he never knew
that overpopulated his town
and turned it into a crime-ridden
noisy and traffic congested city.
It brought clearly home to him
the realization that nothing lasts.

Bob Boyd

He met her on a dating app online,
a mysterious, exotic beauty,
who lived deep in the everglades in Florida.
She claimed to know the gators there by name
Alphie, Wanda and Clem.
He thought that was impressive, if true.
He drove down Alligator Alley to her
rustic cabin hidden in the everglades.
She was more beautiful in person
than her photos could ever have captured.
He stayed for the night and they got in a fight
He stomped outside to drive away
It was so swampy and dark he could hardly see
and curiously his car doors wouldn’t open.
He heard her call Alphie, Wanda and Clem
in an eerie and strange singsong voice.
He turned around and shuddered and screamed
and the snapping jaws of Alphie, Wanda and Clem
were the last things he ever saw in this world.

Bob Boyd

It amazes me how some people
seem to be born more mature than others
and wise beyond their young years
even when they are still children
And they know exactly what they want to be
that they achieve when they grow older,
the kid that says he or she wants to be a doctor
and achieves that goal in his or her life
is one of many amazing examples.
I lacked their wisdom and their direction
was misdirected and a late bloomer
didn’t find my way until age fifty.
And wish I could have been like them.

Bob Boyd

He remembered when she was young
and beautiful forever,
the most beautiful woman
he’d ever seen.

He recalled when he got up the nerve
to finally ask her out on a date
and feared because she was so beautiful
she’d turn him down or wonder
what made him think he was worthy of her.

As expected, she turned him down
and crushed his dreams of being with her
and treating her as well as he could.

Things got worse when she accepted a date
from a guy he knew was no good
and treated women like shit.

Years later when she’d been through
six bad boy guys and was old,
no longer beautiful and alone,
and her beauty no longer
clouded his rational mind,
he realized he was always
too nice a guy instead of
the bad boys she preferred,
and he knew a relationship with her
would never have worked out.

Bob Boyd

Looking out my apartment window,
I see most of the tree leaves
have turned a crinkly brown,
died and been blown off the trees.

But some leaves refused to surrender
to the cold winter purges
and remain a lively green on the trees
like resistant rebels of nature.

I ponder these leaves clinging to life
and wonder how they survived
the winter purges that killed so many.

I think maybe the trees they lived on
aided them in their survival
somehow protecting them from
the yearly seasonal slaughter
of all the fallen dead leaves.

Bob Boyd

He was a stellar student in high school.
He had a bright future,
a rising star, everyone said.
He became the Class Valedictorian,
straight A’s all the way.

He went to a prestigious university,
aced all his studies in his
freshman and sophomore years.

But became radicalized
in his junior year and joined
an anti-American left wing group.

Tried to bomb a police station,
got caught and shot and
mortally wounded.

Died in the ambulance
on the way to the ER,
a rising star burned out
and dead
in the dark night
of his misguided,
radicalized life.

Bob Boyd