Despite all the predators
lurking everywhere
frightening them
stalking them
killing them
ending their lives
the songbirds still sing

Bob Boyd

Love enters
their lives
periodically
stays for a while
then departs
as if Love is
a fickle goddess
that blesses some
curses others
and many
never find
the one

Bob Boyd

Once vibrant people
with vibrant lives
now only skeletons
under tombstones

where are they now

hopefully somewhere
beyond the earth
and the tombstones

pity lives reduced to
death and only that

buried underground
bones under stone
hopefully there’s more

Bob Boyd

She got into the dark arts
when her boyfriend of

several years left her
for another woman.

She studied the books
and the websites,

practiced the darkest
of the dark arts.

Her primary purpose
to psychically kill

her ex-boyfriend’s new
girlfriend.

After six months of
knowledge and practice,

she attained her goal,
her ex-boyfriend’s

girlfriend died in a
horrible car accident.

But, unexpectedly, the
dark arts owned her

after that and chose
to engulf her

smother her
and suck the life

out of her lungs
and her heart.

Be wary of messing
with the dark arts.

Bob Boyd

Many are dead
some are still
clinging to life.

Many have
unexpected medical
problems.

Some are on
walkers.

Some are in
assisted living.

Some are in
nursing homes.

Sooner or later
like me,

they’ll all be dead.

Bob Boyd

The warm weather was
stubborn this year

it was reluctant to
surrender

to the
cold fall weather

it clung to the
70s

rarely dipping to
tops of the 60s

it seemed instead
of a chilly fall

we were going
to have

a prolonged
mild summer

but alas one
night the cold

arrived suddenly
unexpectedly

and the plunge
in the temperature

gave my body the
cold shakes

a sweat shirt
and a blanket.

Bob Boyd

Sitting Bull Seer of Seers had a vision/dream before Bighorn,
Saw the three tribes won against proud Custer’s 7th Cavalry.
Custer, like a fool, didn’t heed the warnings to his historical peril.
A great victory for the oppressed and denigrated resistance,
Who used to be called savages, redskins, and Indians.
In later, biased movies and TV shows, cowboys always the good guys.
Back then, nobody did movies and TV shows about the real bad guys.
Like revisionist history where the victors don’t write the real scripts,
Invaders robbing indigenous people of their culture and their lands,
Broken treaties, Trail of Tears, Wounded Knee and other atrocities.
And those days ended so heartbreakingly for the real good guys,
Chief Joseph, great soul, great leader said, “I will fight no more forever.”
And the legendary warrior Crazy Horse was shot to death.
Decade after decade of living on reservations, almost like prisoners;
Lands shamefully stolen by greedy, heartless, ignoble invaders.
Great feathered defenders of their lands living dismal, empty lives
With tiny pieces of the pie called America, not much of it left for them.
Despite the wrongs, forgiving Native Americans proudly fly American flags
At their magnificent powwows, spectacular events to visit and see,
That keep their cultures and their histories alive, a history that should
Never be forgotten and taught in schools all over America.

Bob Boyd

In my mind I travel back through the years
to when I was in high school.

And I remember when this girl had a crush on me,
but I wasn’t interested in her

until I changed my mind and she vengefully
rejected me for rejecting her when she wanted me.

I found it kind of amusing how she changed her mind
so brutally, but I deserved her rejection

and should have gratefully asked her out when she
had her crush on me.

But, alas, in the greater scheme of things it probably
made no difference

except if I went out with her and she became my never
found soulmate and my wife for life.

Bob Boyd

I’ve never understood why birds eat birds
and fish eat fish

To me it is kind of like cannibalism

Imagine if many humans starting eating humans
like birds eat birds and fish eat fish

The outcry and the outrage would reverberate
all over the planet

The cannibals would be locked away in prisons

But it is just nature’s way for birds to eat birds
and fish to eat fish

They are progammed by nature to do it

However I stand by my statement that it is kind of
like cannibalism

Bob Boyd

I’ve always been a bit bothered by the fact that birds eat birds and fish eat fish. I know it’s just nature’s way, but like I wrote to me it’s kind of like cannibalism. And I hate that many beautiful song birds with their sweet songs are often cannibalized by bigger birds. It’s no wonder they are so skittish all the time, the necessary paranoia of prey.

She took a familiar shortcut through a park
but in the dark

Unknown to her a serial killer was lurking
in the park waiting for someone like her

Halfway through the park, she sensed
the danger

But too late

The serial killer pounced on her

Bad move by him

The moon was full

and she morphed into her
werewolf woman horror

She tore the serial killer apart and did her
city a great public service

and saved all the women who would
have been his future victims

Bob Boyd

Woe to all the women in this world who have been tortured and murdered by serial killers. And all the women who will be. And I wounder how a God of Love, if there is one, allows such horrors to happen. I cannot imagine the horrors of a being captured, tortured, and murdered by one. It is my hope that when these women die, they go to a place of indescribable bliss and peace, and that it won’t matter how they went out of this world, won’t even be a memory to them.

In a pet store, languished a sad, old Betta fish Jailed in a tiny plastic cup with a tight lid on it.

Depressed, he wondered how have I come to only this, a
plastic cup-bound captive unhappy and imprisoned, probably for the rest of my life?

When he was a younger fish, he had grand, opulent dreams of living the high life in an upscale, ritzy fish tank with soothing bubbling water and aquarium lid lights like soft moonbeams glowing upon the bubbling water.

After years trapped in that cup, his hopes shattered, his life, his dreams broken, he had resigned himself to a gulag-like ever after life.

Then a renowned Fish Whisper named Bob Boyd marched into the pet store and saw the anguishing Betta.

He listened to the Betta’s sad tale, and he deduced he didn’t have to be a Freudian psychologist to see the Betta was suffering and suicidal in his soul-crushing, plastic prison.

Having no money or credit cards on him, he’d forgotten to bring his wallet, he needed a plan pronto as the Betta began to hold his breath to self-smother himself to death.

Bob said to himself, “Screw my ethics, grabbed the plastic cup the Betta was in, stuffed it under his surplus navy pea coat and with the excited Betta gasping the word freedom! under Bob’s coat, and to create a distraction, Bob knocked over a cricket bin with the crickets chirping and scrambling all over the pet store floor, and he stealthily snuck out of the store.

And the Betta was freed from that plastic prison forever.

Bob Boyd

some before birth
some at birth
some in childhood
some in young adulthood
some in adulthood
some in middle age

abortions
miscarriages
diseases
accidents
murders

my query is
WHY

why in this world
do so many people
never get to live

full
sometimes
abundant
lives

Bob Boyd

She was so incredibly beautiful
that the first time

men saw her on a movie
screen

some gasped.

I didn’t gasp, but my mind
was blown by her
unparalleled beauty,

and, oh God, how I
wished I could have

been with her.

Sadly, her beauty
didn’t make her
lucky in love.

Six marriages, all
ending in divorce,

and when an old
woman,
she died lonely

never having had
lasting love.

Bob Boyd

First stuffed animals
were suggested
for the elderly with dementia

and they were
beneficial to them
almost like

a real pet.

Now stuffed animals
are said to be
beneficial
to all adults:

stress reduction
less loneliness
mental health improvement
improved sleep
trauma treatment
good memories
a real pet substitute

Taking into consideration
the above

I can see why more
solo adults
are sleeping with
teddy bears

and I can see how
a stuffed dog

or a stuffed cat

would be a viable
no maintenance
option

for many
adults.

Maybe I’ll
get one.

Bob Boyd

The kaleidoscope of this world
is such a confusing mix.
Evil, violence, suffering, virtue,
peace, happiness, all in many
shades, textures and colors.
Different people, different views,
good and bad news every day.
People being born, people dying.
It’s such a complex and confusing
mix with too much evil, too much
violence, too many wars. At least
moments of peace and happiness
for many but not all. And at any
moment your life in pieces, maybe
for all of what’s left of your life.
And death the only way out of it,
this kaleidoscope of existence.

Bob Boyd

It seems to be thought that animals
don’t go anywhere when they die,
except for just dying and no more.
It’s my hope when animals die
they die into something like an
animal heaven, or even like some
believe, reincarnating into higher
lifeforms until they become humans
and eventually get off the wheel
of the perpetual rebirths into
the eternal bliss consciousness.

Bob Boyd

Literally, I sure have mine, but not dreams
in the world anymore. Dreams at night.
Crazy dreams and dreams about women.
Nighttime reveries like nighttime ramblings
of a finished old man with lost ambitions.
A has been of a younger man who had
plenty of real world dreams and a future.
Now no future, except for Death’s arrival.

Bob Boyd

Outside my apartment window
leaves are falling

off the trees

on the ground
and on the streets

left there to die
and decompose.

Not unlike the bodies of
humans when

all over the world
their spirits leave

their bodies, and

they die and
decompose.

And I wonder if leaves
have something

inside of them like
spirits that leave them

when they fall and die.

Bob Boyd

I hadn’t seen her in 50 years
and couldn’t believe

what I saw

compared to how I remembered her
when she was young and beautiful

cruel Time had annihilated her
youth and her beauty

reduced her to a sexless
old lady barely getting around

with her hands on a walker

I couldn’t believe the difference
between the young beauty she was

and the old nondiscript old woman
she had become

and I hated what Time and aging
had done to her

Bob Boyd

It saddens me how age erases a woman’s beauty. Sometimes so much you cannot tell how beautiful a woman was in her youth. To me, it seems cruel that this, like flowers that fade, happens to all women. But I take heart when I read of Near Death Experiences where when an old woman is clinically dead and in the afterlife, she becomes young again. So if these experiences are authentic, maybe death redeems a woman’s beauty, and she stays beautiful forever. And maybe if a woman wasn’t blessed with beauty in this life she is blessed with it in the afterlife. I like the idea of that.

Dark clouds suddenly
appeared

over his town
over his head

he sensed his reckoning
was coming

for the bad deed
he did done

a young woman in her
grave

that he put there
and never got caught

and never got imprisoned
or put to death for

until the dark clouds
opened

and let the bolt of
lightning though

that struck him dead

Bob Boyd

I don’t know if Karma exists, but it can be satisfying if an evil person gets his due. I do believe in cause and effect. You kill a person, get caught, and put in prison or put to death. I believe a lot of what happens in this world is random, like the woman who was walking in a park in New York and, unexpectedly, was killed by a fallen branch. I believe mysteries like Karma will be revealed to me when I die. Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe I’ll just be dead and obliterated into oblivion.