I remember how you were a bully when you were
twelve years old.

All the little boys in your neighborhood were
frightened of you.

But I wasn’t when you pushed your bike into
my bike and I pushed mine into yours.

You left me alone after that until you became
a beautiful teenage girl

and talked me into coming into your grandmother’s
house when she wasn’t there.

And you kissed me oh so deliciously and began to
seduce me, but I got a freak bloody nose,

and that ended what might have been an afternoon
of my first taste of carnal pleasures.

Because you had some kind of a bad reputation
my parents forbid me to see you again.

And you disappeared from my life except for one
day when I saw you in high school with some guys.

I never saw you again after that, but now I wish
I could have found out more about you,

like why you only lived with your grandmother
without a mother and a father, and if I had maybe

I could have helped you to be a better person without
a bad reputation.

Bob Boyd

Andy and Renee trekked to their favorite camping site,
got there just before dark.

Pitched their tent, lit a fire, and they got ready to turn
in for the night.

Darkness covered the camping site and an unusual
quiet permeated the forest.

Then they heard a loud baying in the forest coming
closer to their tent.

Andy peered out the tent while Renee stayed in her
sleeping bag shaking.

The forest lit up with bright red light and something
blew Andy out of the tent.

Two red light flashes followed along with the baying
and the tent and Renee vanished.

And neither Andy nor the police ever found out what
happened to her.

Bob Boyd

He started stealing at age six,
a candy bar from a candy store.

By twelve he was a pro, never
got caught

and graduated to clothes and
pick pocketing wallets

and stealing purses, but at sixteen
he got caught pick pocketing a

Mafioso’s wallet, and nobody’s
seen Freddy since.

They say he’s buried under a new
bank in the heart of the city.

If so, I imagine Freddy would like
being buried under all that cash.

Bob Boyd

But she looked like a Mary,
which wasn’t a good start for
a woman after my heart.
But it didn’t matter in the end.
She hooked up with my friend, Alvin,
and along with his heart, she
stole his prized Chevy convertible
and hasn’t been seen since.
Now I’m thinking she probably
was a Marcy.

Bob Boyd

One month ago tonight the cops were
having a field day in Liverpool.

Hundreds of young guys in the streets
loaded up on alcohol

and causing trouble in Liverpool,
getting nabbed and arrested by the cops.

One’s a baby-faced lad with six cops
around him, but he doesn’t look six

cops bad to warrant all the police attention.
They let him go, so I must have been right.

And there are plenty of other lads raising
hell in the streets,

making one month ago tonight a field day
for the Liverpool police.

Bob Boyd

After seven dates, she told
him she loved him.

He told her he loved her too,
but a week later,

as though the fun was done,
the love no longer new,

she said she’d been confused,
and she left him for another.

But that was her modus operandi –
love them and leave them.

Bob Boyd

In his late teens he learned he
had a knack for playing a guitar
and singing rock songs.

He formed a rock band with two
high school friends, and after
high school they played in local
bars and wrote their own music.

A year later, they had a hit record
and toured the country, playing
before thousands of cheering fans.

He was high on the fame, the fans,
and the women, but after a couple
of years and no more hit records,
the fame high waned, and he got
tired of always being on the road.

He quit the band and went to work,
managing one of his father’s pet stores,
never missed his semi-rockstar fame.

Bob Boyd

He met her in a dream,
a pretty woman with black hair,
blue eyes, and a nice smile.
She said her name was Adaline,
and she worked making donuts
in a donuts shop.

Though a dream, Adaline seemed
real life, but she turned into
a psycho woman,laughed like an
evil maniac, and raised a knife
above her head to stab him with.

He woke up horrified, and it
took a minute before he
realized it had only been
a nightmare, and he hadn’t
been stabbed.

He thought he dreamed of the
evil donut woman because
he had been wanting a donut
from the donuts shop not far
from where he lived before
he went to bed that night. But
he was too tired to drive to it.

He drove to the donuts shop that
morning. Police cars were all
around it, and it was closed.
Later on the nightly news, he
learned a new female employee
named Adaline had gone crazy and
stabbed the shop owner to death.
She looked like the Adaline in his
dream, and, luckily, he never saw
her in a dream again.

Bob Boyd

If there really are soulmates, they’re disappointingly
elusive for many, maybe most.

So many people never find them. They think they
have, but then things go bust,

and they realize their soulmates were illusionary,
and they are alone again.

My fervent hope is soulmates are real and
waiting for us in the afterlife

with a fairytale ending and the happily in love
ever after.

But more likely I’m being foolish, and there
probably aren’t any soulmates, only illusions.

Bob Boyd

She wore earrings that were longer than
usual earrings,

and I loved the way they looked on her,
elegant, classy and oh so stylish.

I would have loved her too, and she
had a sweet crush on me,

but I was born decades too early for her,
and I couldn’t cross that decades-long line.

But I wish I could have been nearer her age
because along with the earrings she had

the sweetest voice I’d ever heard, and she
was petite and adorable.

But, alas, the years between us were more
than 40, and it would have been unfair to her.

Bob Boyd

On her YouTube channel she fearlessly explores haunted locations, says she was married to a ghost.

She’s uniquely lovely to look at with an English accent and
impressive eloquence.

I think she might have been married to a ghost the way she doesn’t get totally freaked out by them.

But if she wasn’t and she just did a publicity stunt that got
her tons of attention,

If she just made the marriage up, I’m fine with that because
good on her for pulling it off and no harm done.

She goes by the name Brocarde and has beautiful,long
raven black hair and mystical, blue eyes.

Eyes that look like they might have second sight capable
of even seeing ghosts.

You can find her at her YouTube page, Brocade, and you will
see she’s exactly as I have described her.

Bob Boyd

When he first fell in love with her, he told her he loved her
so much that he would die for her.
Little did he know that was prophetic.
He had a great pizza restaurant he called Gino’s Pizzeria.
People liked his pizza so much that he made a lot
of money with his special Italian pizza recipe.
He opened ten more pizzerias and got rich.
But all those pizzerias required so much of his time
that his wife got lonely being by herself too much.
And eventually she got a lover that kept asking her
to divorce her pizzeria husband.
But she came up with a better idea related to the
her husband’s million dollar insurance policy
with her as the sole beneficiary.
She lied to her lover, an ex con laborer, said her
husband beat her up all the time.
The ex con laborer murdered her husband, buried his
body at a construction site where a concrete
foundation was going to be poured the next day.
And her husband’s declaration that he would die
for her became more true than he had ever imagined.

Bob Boyd

When his girlfriend left him for another man,
the surprise and the shock of it made him crazy.
The rage inside him burned like a flaming furnace.
Many times he imagined killing her for what she’d done.
He bought a Glock 19 pistol, learned how to use it.
He knew the hours she worked at her supermarket job
and waited for her outside one night at 9 pm in his car.
When she exited the supermarket, he jumped out of his car
and told her she was going to die until he changed his mind
and put the pistol to his head and killed himself instead.

Bob Boyd

He spent weeks in solitary
confinement nearly going
insane until he figured out
how to save his sanity.

He pretended he was on
a magic raft traveling
all over the sea and to
various countries and
having many adventures.

He got so good at
imagining his seafarer
trips that he didn’t mind
solitary at all and enjoyed
his daily imaginations.

After he got out of solitary,
he became a great writer
writing books about his
solitary confinement
imaginings.

Bob Boyd

Killing and dying shouldn’t be happening for
as long as humans have been on earth.

Humans should have been evolved past such
wasteful violence.

Yet, here we are with wars still happening,
and I think they will keep happening

maybe until every last human is obliterated
into absolute oblivion.

Bob Boyd

Because I’m old now, time
rushes by, as if it’s in a hurry
for me to die.

I didn’t want to know my dying
date when I was young, but
I’d kinda like to know it now.

That way I could plan ahead
and probably eat more ice cream,
pastries, and chocolate before
I died.

Maybe I’d do some important
things, but I can’t think of any
right now.

And at this age, it wouldn’t
frightened me to know my dying
day, and I’m good with expiring.

My hope is I’ll die by 85 instead
of 99 because the older you
grow, the longer it takes for you
to die, the more impaired you
will become.

And maybe you’ll lose your mind
to a dementia or Alzheimer’s,
so please God let me die at 85.

Bob Boyd

August is here
soon the fall
winter following
the cold, the snow
I like the challenge
of living with
the winter cold
using less heat
a challenge to me
this winter I’m
getting a bed tent
like camping in
the cold outside
but with the warmth
concentrated in a
smaller space
in my bedroom
a challenge to me
an experiment I
can’t wait to try
if it fails at
least I won’t die

Bob Boyd

Once they seemed like friends to you.
You thought they’d stay in touch.

But they never did and didn’t really
care about you or your life.

And when you die, they probably
won’t even know it. And if they do

if will be barely like a ho hum,
those who once seemed like friends.

And when you wake up and realize
this, you will feel the same way

about them and won’t know when
they have died and left this world.

Perhaps that’s the way it’s meant to be.
Maybe things will be different in the

coming afterlife for them and for me.

Bob Boyd

This seems fair. To me it seems just that
you kill the predator of your prized pigeons.

But, alas, hawks are protected by Federal Laws,
and if you kill one in Florida, you could be fined

up to $10,000 and put in jail of up to six months,
and you may be prohibited from racing or

exhibiting your pigeons ever again. I find that
unjust. It gives the hawk free reign in slautering

your pigeons. And it is nonsensical that a hawk
is allowed to slaughter one’s pigeon.

It makes no goddamn sense is what I’m trying
to say in the proverbial plain English.

And outrageous that the owner of racing pigeons
gets screwed over in the courts of law.

And the hawk can go on killing prized racing
pigeons with impunity. That law needs to change.

Bob Boyd

Leah lived in the background of her prettier sister’s life.
Her parents favored her sister. She was more popular
in school. And she got better grades than Leah did.
Leah suffered from an inferiority complex and she
blamed her sister for it. One day her pretty sister
disappeared and was found drowned in a nearby lake.
And the police called it accidental. Only Leah knew it
was no accident, and her life got better thereafter.

Bob Boyd