Category: Poetry

The kids in high school laughed at her clueless
questions in all her classes.
They said she was stupid for asking so many
dumb questions for things, which
should have been easily obvious.
They stopped the laughing and the ridicule
when she got all A’s in all her classes
and became the class valedictorian.

Bob Boyd

he never did anything of value,
drank too much and always screwed up.
never could hold a job or a woman.
spent his final days homeless
living in homeless shelters
and on the stone cold streets
drunk and begging for money.
bemoaned living a worthless life,
regretted having wasted his
years in drunkenness and failure
until he found some redemption
when he overcame his drinking,
when he became like a saint
helping legions of homeless people
get out of the streets and
quit their debilitating addictions
and get help for their physical
and/or mental health conditions
and lead better, happier lives.

when he died, a thousand people
attended his funeral and felt sure
he’d found a place in heaven.

Bob Boyd

Don’t feed the trolls, people say.
They’re just meanspirited people
hungering for some attention.
Imagine if you could push a button
and zap the troll’s computers
and cell phones into oblivion.
Imagine if you could shut them off
forever and ever from the Internet
and just have decent and polite
people engaging in friendly chats.

Bob Boyd

He never got over
the death of his
beautiful wife
of over 30
wonderful years.

Even ten years
later, his eyes
still tear up
when he holds
one of her dresses
and thinks of her.

When he holds one
of her dresses,
he imagines her
still in it and sighs.

Then he comes out
of his reverie
and awakens
to the
painful reality
that she is never
going to be in
that dress again.

And torrents of tears
fall from his eyes.

Bob Boyd

You are old,
pushing 80.
You are alone
without love
and you think
you’d like to
find a woman
to cherish and
love.

But try as much
as you will
to hide the fact
the sword of
Democoles
hangs over any
old couples love
you could find,
even if you
could find any
love, pushing 80,

You know that
death will be
racing toward
both of you
with misery
on its heels
for one of you.

Bob Boyd

I hear the leaves running on the street beside me
as I walk along the sidewalk.
At least that’s the way it appears, courtesy
of the rambling wind tonight.
It surprises me that in the near end of my life
my senses seem to have evolved
into a higher perception of the world around me.
It’s as if I’ve been given unexpected sense
along with the wisdom of aging.
Maybe tomorrow, I’ll hear and understand
the whisperings of the wind and
the murmurers of the leaves.

Bob Boyd

Maria Marten (1801-1827)
suffered a tragic life.
An attractive woman
she just wanted love
and a caring husband.
Had children with 2 suitors
Both refused to wed her.

At 24, she met William Condor,
who seemed a gentleman.
He promised to marry her
instead he shot her to death
in the infamous Red Barn
and fled to another city
pretending to her family
that she was with him and well.

Maria’s family got suspicious
when she hadn’t written them
Cordor kept making excuses
for her lack of correspondence
until Maria’s mother saw Maria
in a dream saying she was dead
and her body was in the Red Barn.

Sadly, the dream proved true
and Maria’s body was found,
as was William Condor who
was captured and hung on
the gallows, August 11, 1824.

Bob Boyd

He wasn’t prepared
for the death of his wife.
He thought their love
would last on earth
forever and ever.

He forgot or didn’t
want to face the fact
that love and lovers
die sooner or later
in this fleeting life.

Now he spends his
days crying streams
of salty tears and
having imaginary
heartrending
conversations
with his dead wife

and sends prayers
to the highest heavens
with the tearful hope
he’ll see her again
when he follows her
into the Great Unknown.

Bob Boyd

When the birds stop singing
and the bugs go silent
get the hell out of the woods.

Bob Boyd

Strumming his guitar and
singing through the years
he never lived his big dream
of being a superstar rockstar
paid the dues over and over
did many disagreeable gigs
in beer-stained unsavory bars

They told him he was better
than the singers on the radio
he had more than it takes
to sing hit songs on Billboard
yet he never got the big break
and had no choice but to
squander his promising talent
singing at small parties and
low paying Holiday Inn gigs
to barely make enough money
to pay his rent and his bills.

Bob Boyd

Hurling through the universe in a rocket
with not much room for the living quarters
stuffed in such a small environment
amazing how astronauts can survive
compressed in such a suffocating space
I think many people would be claustrophobic
and fearful of the enormity of infinity
and feel trapped in that speeding projectile
praying everything would work right
instead of an equipment failure
and be lost forever in outer space

Bob Boyd

The sun is about 93 million miles
from the earth,
yet it seems so much closer
when it illuminates the
earth each day.
And for a light source
being so far away,
it sure can make you burn.

Bob Boyd

I watch the wind blowing leaves in a circle.
The leaves look they’re kids having fun
giggling and chasing each other in circles.
Round and round and round they go
like a merry-go-round of whirling leaves
instead of plastic or fiberglass horses.
And I wonder how I missed such marvels
of nature when I was in the work world.

Bob Boyd

I remember when the USA news never showed
beautiful Russian women on TV.

All we saw were old women babushkas,
which gave the impression
there were no beautiful women in Russia.

As an unworldly, young guy, I believed that
until when I was working in jewelry store in Chicago
a beautiful Russian woman strolled through the doors
and bought some jewelry from me.

I was stunned. I thought she was a Russian anomaly among all the
unattractive Russian women.

Then the Iron Curtain fell and the news began
showing Russian supermodels on the news
gracing cat walks in Paris, London and Milan,
as if with a wave of a wand,
magically Russian babushkas morphed into beautiful women.

Now I think the government propagandists
were afraid if American men
got even fleeting glimpses of
how mind blowingly beautiful Russian women were
we would have all defected to Russia
driven mad by their siren like beauty
desperately hoping to win the love of one.

Bob Boyd

He was from Jamaica and a natural comedian.
He worked with me and Nate in a retail store
stocking shelves and clowning around.

When Nate said he was sad and lonely
because his girlfriend was visiting relatives out of town,
the Jamaican guy said you’re lonely because you only have
one woman.

He said I got more than one womens. I never get lonely
because I got me reserves.

He probably did have reserves. He was funny and charming,
and no doubt the womens loved him.

And I liked the way he said womens instead of women.
Maybe the grammar was wrong, but it sounded cool to me.
And I ain’t got no reserves and no womens.

But I’m no longer a young man, and the womens
don’t pay no mind to old me.

Bob Boyd

They swarmed us like a war of the worlds,
those goddamn bees.

I was nine. My lucky and strange friend Billy was ten.

I got stung twenty times. Billy got didn’t
get stung at all.

At first I couldn’t figure out why the bees kept stinging me
and none stung Billy.

Billy said it was because he was an alien.
I laughed back then, but now I think he was right.

Because three years later, I saw a large UFO over Billy’s house
and Billy and his family disappeared forever.

I think he must have gone back to his home planet
in some distant galaxy unknown to any scientists.

Bob Boyd

Nights and days grow shorter.
Weeks and years fly by.
And more and more
you become aware
of your fleeting mortality.
You read about celebrities
you knew all your life
dying in the news almost daily.
Friends begin dying as well.
And more and more
you become aware
of your fleeting mortality
until you are dead too.

Bob Boyd

Too many young women get murdered
all over this unpredictable world.
I see this on true crime shows.
I read about it in the news.
The numbers are shocking.
It’s all tragically sad
Lives ended far too soon.
Killed by people they knew.
Killed by strangers.
Killed by serial killers.
Too many young women
dead in the ground.
If there’s a God above,
and if like a song says
He’s in control,
I have wonder how He can
let so many young women
get murdered all over the world.

Bob Boyd

A children’s entertainment company is in the hopper
can’t trust them to provide
clean children’s entertainment anymore.

Ruined their brand with inappropriate
shows and cartoons for kids.

Dying like the dinosaurs, going extinct,
and gasping out lousy programs
in futile attempts to remain alive.

Bob Boyd

As a wayward teenager,
I wanted to be a rockstar
for less than artistic reasons.
the girls were more important
than the rock and roll music.
However, I sucked at singing
and lacked the patience,
and probably the talent,
to learn to play a guitar
or even a set of drums,
but I was hell on wheels
at playing an air guitar.

Bob Boyd