Poems

Maybe an Animals
uncomplicated life,
though limited,
is in some ways better
than the complexities
of being a human.

Bob Boyd

I couldn’t read her mind,
but I knew what she was thinking,
what she was planning –
leaving me.

Bob Boyd

I remember how she was so beautiful
and how I wanted to be with her.
And I believe she wanted to be
with me too.
But there was a line I could not cross –
a wedding band on her finger.

Bob Boyd

She was beautiful and built
in high school;
all the guys wanted to
be with her.
But she got obese
in her senior year
and lost her beauty
and her perfect figure.
And I never could
understand why
she did that to herself.

Bob Boyd

Some are born with
awesome athletic abilities.
Most are not.
Everyone has strengths.
Everyone has weaknesses.
But wouldn’t it be
even more awesome
if you one could be
born great at everything.

Bob Boyd

I have lived in many places.
Good times, bad times.
Met mostly good people,
backstabbers and bad people, a few.
But maybe the backstabbers
and bad people were good for me —
maybe they made me wiser and stronger.

Bob Boyd

She was Summer in Winter;
she was Springtime in Fall,
but like the seasons she changed
and fell out of love with me.

Bob Boyd

I thought they’d
stay in touch
after I retired
none of
them did

but come to
think of it
I didn’t stay
in touch
either

so I guess
we work
friends
weren’t
really
friends
after all

and in a
way I like
it better
this way

and I like
not hearing
anything
about the
work life
I left
behind

Bob Boyd

I remember seeing him as a child when
he seemed like one of God’s angels.

Everyone said he was a sweet and
good kid.

He stayed good all through school,
honors and a perfect student.

Not surprisingly, he became a priest,
made his Catholic family proud.

Three years later, he got arrested
for sexually abusing children

in his parish, and nobody who knew
him could believe it until

all the witnesses came forth and
gave irrefutable testimonies that

got him defrocked and sent to prison
for many years.

And remembering how innocent and
good he was as a child, I couldn’t

figure out how he grew up to be a
serial sexual predator.

Bob Boyd

Female teachers in the news nearly every week
for sexually abusing students, sometimes preteens.

Teachers who usually have boyfriends, fiances, or
husbands; some have kids.

Teachers sent to jail, losing their teaching credentials,
put on sex offender lists, usually losing their

boyfriends, fiances, or husbands, sometimes children,
along with their reputations and social standing.

On crime shows women getting arrested all the time
for drunk driving, unlike in the past, and sad to see

them cuffed, put in squad cars, taken to police stations,
and booked for drunk driving.

What’s happening with these women? And thank God
for all the women who aren’t doing these things.

Bob Boyd

Doctor Vonniker, an alleged scientist, was believed to be catching stray dogs and experimenting on them in his laboratory at the remote top of a hill.

Our town, once a refuge for stray dogs, had barely any of them left since Vonniker moved into our secluded, small town in Hancock County, Ohio.

A teenager then, my friend Tim and I often spied on Doctor Vonniker’s laboratory at night, looking through binoculars, trying to see what he was up to with those stray dogs.

We got a terrifying payday on the last day of Doctor Vonniker’s life. We heard an explosion, and two beasts with bodybuilder bodies and dog heads broke out of the laboratory; we hid right before they sped past us,

growling. We called the police, and the next day, the news reported that Doctor Vonniker had been savaged to death by dogs. But nothing was reported about the dogmen Tim and I saw escaping the lab. I

t made Tim and me wonder if the strange doctor was working for the government, creating super dogman soldiers.

But aside from some sightings of the doctor’s dogmen, nobody ever found out what the doctor was up to in his experiment, which had gone deadly awry.

Bob Boyd

The foolish stranger is starting to walk into Forbidden Forest,
a known werewolf haunt that nobody goes into at night.
And he couldn’t have picked a worse night to enter Forbidden Forest
with a full moon blazing.

I warned him about the werewolf, but he acted like my warning was a
joke. Then he foolishly said, “I can take care of myself.”
I said, “No you can’t, not against that werewolf,” but he didn’t realize
the danger.

I wondered if he was mentally ill, unable to understand the horror.
I tried and tired to talk him out of going into the forest,
to save his life, but he wouldn’t listen to me.

Then he nonchalantly strolled into it the forest while whistling,
oblivious to the werewolf lurking under the full moon in there.

Moments later, I heard the howls and expected to see the stranger
running out of the forest. But it was too late when I heard the
werewolf growling nearby and what sounded like bones cracking
and the stranger screaming like a cat being skinned.

And I knew the foolish stranger was getting slaughtered until
he came out of the forest with a dead and bloody werewolf
slung over his shoulder.

He threw it down in front of me and said, “Have a souvenir,”
and he strolled away whistling.

Who was that guy, I wondered, and I never saw him again.

Bob Boyd

Joan and Michael felt fate had
brought them together
Their dual destinies converged
And they went 50/50 on the
purchase of a luxurious
Tudor Revival Home
for an exorbitant cost
But their relationship
fell apart because
of conflicting political beliefs
He was far right
She was hard left
Their hate for each other
increased insanely
till they both went a little crazy
and plotted killing each other
over their exorbitant house
No wrangling no court case
One dead the other gets the house
Secretly she hired a hitman
Secretly he did the same
Both hitmen were undercover cops
Joan and Michael got arrested
And now fate has ripped them apart
and put them in boxes with bars

Bob Boyd

Sweet is the voice in the land of gold,
And sweeter the music of birds that soar,
When the cry of the heron is heard on the wold,
And the waves break softly on Bundatrore.

Down floats on the murmuring of the breeze
The call of the cuckoo from Cossahun,
The blackbird is warbling among the trees,
And soft is the kiss of the warming sun.

The cry of the eagle of Assaroe
O’er the court of Mac Morne to me is sweet,
And sweet is the cry of the bird below
Where the wave and the wind and the tall cliff meet.

Finn mac Cool is the father of me,
Whom seven battalions of Fenians fear:
When he launches his hounds on the open lea
Grand is their cry as they rouse the deer.

’Tis idle! we exhaust and squander
The glittering mine of thought in vain
All-baffled reason cannot wander,
Beyond her chain.
The flood of life runs dark—dark clouds
Make lampless night around its shore:
The dead, where are they? In their shrouds—
Man knows no more.

Evoke the ancient and the past,
Will one illumining star arise?
Or must the film, from first to last,
O’erspread thine eyes?
When life, love, glory, beauty, wither,
Will wisdom’s page, or science chart,
Map out for thee the region whither
Their shades depart?

Supposest thou the wondrous powers,
To high imagination given,
Pale types of what shall yet be ours,
When earth is heaven?
When this decaying shell is cold,
Oh! sayest thou the soul shall climb
What magic mount she trod of old,
Ere childhood’s time?

And shall the sacred pulse that thrilled,
Thrill once again to glory’s name?
And shall the conquering love that filled
All earth with flame,
Re-born, revived, renewed, immortal,
Resume his reign in prouder might,
A sun beyond the ebon portal,
Of death and night?

No more, no more—with aching brow,
And restless heart, and burning brain,
We ask the When, the Where, the How,
And ask in vain.
And all philosophy, all faith,
All earthly—all celestial lore,
Have but one voice, which only saith

And Deirdre dishevelled her hair and began kissing Noisi and drinking his blood, and the colour of embers came into her cheeks, and she uttered this lay.

Long is the day without Usnagh’s Children;
It was never mournful to be in their company.
A king’s sons, by whom exiles were rewarded,
Three lions from the Hill of the Cave.

Three dragons of Dun Monidh,
The three champions from the Red Branch:
After them I shall not live—
Three that used to break every onrush.

Three darlings of the women of Britain,
Three hawks of Slieve Gullion,
Sons of a king whom valour served,
To whom soldiers would pay homage.

Three heroes who were not good at homage,
Their fall is cause of sorrow—
Three sons of Cathba’s daughter,
Three props of the battle-host of Coolney.

Three vigorous bears,
Three lions out of Liss Una,
Three lions who loved their praise,
Three pet sons of Ulster.

That I should remain after Noisi
Let no one in the world suppose!
After Ardan and Ainnle
My time would not be long.

Ulster’s high-king, my first husband,
I forsook for Noisi’s love:
Short my life after them,
I will perform their funeral game.

After them I will not be alive—
Three that would go into every conflict,
Three who liked to endure hardships,
Three heroes who never refused combat.

O man that diggest the tomb,
And that puttest my darling from me,
Make not the grave too narrow,
I shall be beside the noble ones.

“Terence, this is stupid stuff!
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache!
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head…
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow!
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad!
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad!”

Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,
There’s brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God’s ways to man.
Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world’s not.
And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:
The mischief is that ’twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie God knows where,
And carried half way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
‘Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul’s stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
–I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

When it’s good it’s heaven.
When it’s bad it’s hell.
It’s sustainable when
the hells are few
and the heavens are many.

Of course, I’m writing this
from the biased male perspective.
But I’m sure of what I wrote
the reverse is true:

The heavens and hells of a
romantic relationship with a man

And I must concede with some men
the hells are far worse than those
with women.

Bob Boyd

It breaks my heart to know that too many women
and girls get murdered in this world,

approximately 83,000 worldwide yearly, and, if there’s
a loving Creator, I have to wonder why this

abominable femicide is allowed to go on. You could say
God gives us free will, but I see no free will for the

women and girls slaughtered. And fuck you to all the
human monsters that murder them.

I hope and pray when these murdered women and girls die,
they go to a glorious place where it won’t matter

how they went out of this world, and the horrors
they suffered won’t even be a memory.

Bob Boyd

CH’IN CHIA
Ch’in Chia (first century a.d.) was summoned to take up an appointment at the capital at a time when his wife was ill and staying with her parents. He was therefore unable to say goodbye to her, and sent her three poems instead. This is the last of the three.

Solemn, solemn the coachman gets ready to go:
“Chiang, chiang” the harness bells ring.
At break of dawn I must start on my long journey:
At cock-crow I must gird on my belt.
I turn back and look at the empty room:
For a moment I almost think I see you there.
One parting, but ten thousand regrets:
As I take my seat, my heart is unquiet.
What shall I do to tell you all my thoughts?
How can I let you know of all my love?
Precious hairpins make the head to shine
And bright mirrors can reflect beauty.
Fragrant herbs banish evil smells
And the scholar’s harp has a clear note.
The man in the Book of Odes[18] who was given a quince
Wanted to pay it back with diamonds and rubies.
When I think of all the things you have done for me,
How ashamed I am to have done so little for you!
Although I know that it is a poor return,
All I can give you is this description of my feelings.