Just as he peers out of his bedroom window
he sees the moon is full

as if on cue, he hears the werewolf howling
not far from his house

the howls keep growing louder
nearer

he has wolfsbane planted around his home
a protective barrier

sprinkled salt surrounds his house too
supposedly it wards of werewolves

he has garlic hanging on the doors
and the windows

he has silver items on his person
another alleged werewolf repellent

a crucifix hangs around his neck
he’s hoping that will work too

he’s new at staving off werewolves
crosses his fingers for luck

and hopes those werewolf repellents work
that he read about in a book

but luck was not with him that night
the repellents were just ineffective folk tales

the werewolf, a spurned ex girlfriend, broke into
his home, tore him to shreds

in the last moments of his screaming, terrifying death
he regretted he didn’t buy the gun and silver bullets .

Bob Boyd

You’re wasting your love on that woman,
but you cannot see that yet

you’re enamored with her honeysuckle
southern accent and her bewitching beauty

you don’t know it yet because she’s hiding
her dark nature

a year from now she will steal some of your money
and be messing with a married man

you will leave her with your heart broken
and your mind in tatters

and, believe me, you won’t forget her
she’ll be unforgettable in your memory banks

filed under good times and bad times with
a deceitful southern woman

Bob Boyd

I just remembered an event from my past
when I was often partying and drunk
a friend I knew introduced me to a woman
in a bar and we seemed to have simpatico
she gave me her phone number and I
thought maybe we’d go out on a date
but when I called the number the next
day it was a wrong number
pondering that event I think it was
for the best since she was deceptive
and even if it worked out we probabaly
would have broken up anyway
a heartache I wouldn’t have needed
and I’m not eating sour grapes

Bob Boyd

People fighting, women screaming,
it’s a wild weekend night in Sheffield, England
police all over the streets quelling the mayhem
one erratic man keeps taunting the police
shouts at them and asks them to arrest him
and he’s acting like he’s on an amphetamine
surprisingly he doesn’t get his wish
an inebriated woman yelling and restrained
by three police gets escorted into a police van
what a waste of her femininity
I remember when police vans were paddy wagons
and not as many women got drunk on their asses
a skinny guy with his shirt off is acting crazy
as if he wants to fight someone while a man
plays a mellow song with a guitar in the background
the skinny guy puts his shirt back on
later the police pin him against a wall and probably
arrest him and stuff him in the van too
I think he had too much to drink and got beer muscles
a crowd of men about to fight are separated
by other men before police rush in and quell the craziness
I’m glad I’m not in Sheffield tonight
it’s too out of control and two many crazies are in the streets
in must be a full moon in Sheffield
for such a wild weekend night of mayhem there
I’m glad I’m at my computer far away from it

Bob Boyd

I remember her briefly.
She came to work at
the same place I did.
She seemed nice.
She seemed normal.
Then a week later
she didn’t show up
for work, and I learned
she had killed herself.
I couldn’t believe it.
She didn’t seem as
if she was suicidal. I
don’t know how she
killed herself, and I
really didn’t want to
know, but so sad she
did it. So sad she died.
I hope she went to a
heavenly place where
she could be happy
and be healed.

Bob Boyd

Have you any idea why a guy would say a man
who died was a lucky bastard?

Of course it sounds contrary. How could someone
that died be a lucky bastard?

The answer is he had died himself, but temporarily,
and what he saw and experienced

made him want to stay dead forever in the place
of bliss and love that he was in.

So to him, someone who got there permanently
was a lucky bastard.

And I tend to believe he was right and that what
he said was true.

Bob Boyd

When I met with Mark, he said
he had an AI girlfriend. I thought
he was kidding until he took out
his cell phone and introducted
her to me. She sounded and
talked so much like a human
that I thought he was kidding.
After a while, I realized he was
serious, and that the voice was
an AI girlfriend.

I spent an hour talking to him
and her. After that I could see
what he saw in her, and I wished
him well. Surprised by his choice
a machine over a real woman,
I did a lot of thinking about it.
I concluded if an AI girlfriend
made him happy, why not.
That was six years ago, and
Mark is still happy and in love
with his AI girlfriend. And I have
to admit, he’s had better luck
with her than I have had with
real women.

Bob Boyd

As a kid, he fished all the time
and loved to catch fish.

But he didn’t fish out of necessity
for food. He fished merely for sport.

And instead of throwing the fish back
in the water, he just let them die.

Then when he was in his late teens
he had a dream where the hundreds

of fish he had caught and killed
appeared before him one by one.

He felt the searing pain and the agony
he had caused those fish.

The pain and agony were so real,
he felt like he was going to die too.

He woke up uncertain if he were
dead or living

and felt something like lifesaving
relief when he realized it was just a dream.

And he never fished again after that dream,
which to this day he feels was more than a dream.

Bob Boyd

I see this over and over. Couples fall in love,
but as time and new love passions pass,
the love often becomes bitter sweet. And
eventually the love is gone and the
couples part.

I’ve experienced this myself a number of
times. It’s as if after the euphoria of new
love passes, the hidden parts of the
loved one emerge.

Sometimes seemingly from dark corners
of their souls, like the woman who a year
after love had bloomed stole from me, and
I saw the dark, hidden parts in her, and she
had destroyed my love for her forever.

But that was only one of the countless often
bitter relationship refrains playing out every
day all over the world.

How I wish it wasn’t so.

Bob Boyd

He spies a lone butterfly
with splendid colors,
blues, oranges and purples.

He see it land on some violet
hibiscus flowers, and its wings
flutter as if delighted with its
find.

But then from under the flowers
two claws snatch the butterfly
into the chewing mandibles of
a praying mantis.

He’s shocked by the horror of it,
a beautiful, harmless insect
snatched out of this world.

And he wonders why the hell
does the world have to be
filled with so much carnage.

A world where beautiful
butterflies and beautiful people
are brutally taken out of it
every second, every minute,
every hour of every day.

Bob Boyd

He hears crows cawing outside his apartment.
He wonders what all that noise is about.
Do they just like to make a racket, or are they
discussing things like crow politics or the weather?
He being a little nuts gets an idea. He tapes the
caws of the crows and for weeks practices the
caws until he feels proficient in crow cawing.

The next time the crows appear in the trees
outside his apartment and begin their caws,
he steps out of his apartment and begins
cawing back at them. But he doesn’t get the
results he thought he would. The crows caw
louder and begin attacking him. He runs into
his apartment and the crows beat their wings
against his apartment windows for at least ten
minutes and, finally, fly away cawing madly.

He calls his veterinarian girlfriend and tells her
what happened. She says to him, “You have to
be careful with crow speak. If you caw wrong,
it sounds like you are swearing at the crows.
Thereafter he never tried to caw at the crows,
or even step out of his apartment when he
heard them cawing in the trees.

Bob Boyd

Bree was an all A’s student in high school,
participated in many extracurricular activities.

Got a scholarship from an ivy league college,
became brainwashed there against the US.

She joined radical groups, attended many
protests

became more and more radicalized and
got involved in a bombing plot.

And helped make a homemade bomb
to blow up a government building with.

On the way to the building in her car
with two others the bomb went off

accidentally and killed Bree and her
two accomplices.

Now all of her potential, all of what she
could have been

is buried in Glenview cemetery, and the former
all A’s high school student is gone forever.

Bob Boyd

To accelerate his spiritual evolution and
try to get off the wheel of rebirths sooner

he signed up for a month of constant
meditation at Enlightenment Monastery.

The first week he got blitzed 24/7, felt he
was getting close to becoming enlightened.

The second week the peace and the blitz
gave way to feeling jittery and nervous.

By week three the meditations started
getting too intense.

He felt like he was on the edge of a
nervous breakdown.

But he kept meditating, thinking he could
meditate his way through it.

Somewhere in the fourth week, he began
screaming and shaking freakishly,

as if a man possessed and out of his
mortal mind, and he began smashing

windows in the monastery until some of
the monks restrained him.

They called emergency services and
an ambulance drove off with him screaming.

In the ER they got him sedated and calmed
down enough for him to be taken home.

Approximately a week later, he hung himself
to death on a tree outside his apartment.

Maybe he reached enlightenment prematurely
and when he died it leveled out, and now

he’s one with the cosmos and living in
eternal bliss consciousness.

Bob Boyd

His life has become so boring in his ninetieth years
that a medical crisis brings some excitement into his life.
A stay in the hospital like socialization with all the attention
from doctors and nurses and all the conversations.
Unlike his solitary, friendless life at his lonely home where
he’s barely living and just waiting to die with nobody to
talk to and nobody who cares if he lives or if he dies.

Bob Boyd

If reincarnation is real, I’d rather not come
back.

In truth, I’d prefer to stay dead in the ground
then do a rewind.

I could be reborn on the cusp of a nuclear
holocaust, which I think is inevitable.

So who’s ever in charge of reincarnation,
God or gods, if it’s real let me stay dead

instead of coming back into this world of
uncertainties, evil and suffering for many.

This life has been enough; another one
has no appeal for me.

I’d rather be dead in the ground free
from uncertainties, evil, and suffering.

Bob Boyd

I can’t see having a TV,
exorbitant costs for cable,
most of it unwatchable for me,
too many infomercials in the
over the top high costs.
Everything I need is on the net,
don’t need expensive TV. Better
options on the net, many of
them are free, unlike TV.

Bob Boyd

Why all the confusion with the various and
differing religions, often the proponents of
each thinking they are right.

Hey God, why couldn’t you have given these
misinformed mortals some guidance in their
dogmatic pursuits of You?

And for Your Sake, why didn’t you intervene
when they shed so much blood in your holy
name, staining it with shame?

Perhaps you are above or oblivious to the fray
that takes place every day with proponents of
many religions claiming to be the only way.

Bob Boyd

With an AI Image Generator, I have created
women with the post-impressionist genre.
I created real women with the AI Image Generator too,
but they didn’t look as good as the post-impressionist ones.
The real women, no matter how beautiful, looked bland
and unappealing compared to the post-impressionist ones.
And if I could be with a woman eternally in the afterlife,
I would want a real life post-impressionist one.
I’m putting that out in the universe, like a rocket in space,
hoping the Absolute hears me and answers my prayer.

Bob Boyd

I had a second cousin who killed two people,
one a young salesman in a retail store robbery,
the other a prison guard during an escape.
Somehow he evaded capture for many years.
And he wrote beautiful poetry during those years,
was even a celebrated poet in a city poetry group.
I only knew him a little, and he was nice to me,
so I was shocked to learn he had murder in him.
And I cannot understand how he had the soul of a poet
and the mind of a killer, the two seemed incompatible.
I often think of poets as gentler people incapable
of being soulless, psycho killers, but I was wrong
about my second cousin, who death freed from prison,
but might be somewhere worse now, like a burning hell.

Bob Boyd

The city was overrun with vampires,
Friends and neighbors were bitten
and turned into the night creatures.
Soon an army of vampires besieged
the city and nowhere was safe.
Professor Montablanc feverishly
worked to find a way to save the city.
In his underground, vampire-proofed
laboratory he invented the solution.
He called it the Vampire Vaporizer,
a ray gun that harnessed solar power.
A single blast vaporized vampires like
the white hot noonday sun.
The professor gave Vampire Vaporizers
to the citizens unbitten by the vampires.
Within a night, they blasted all the
vampires out of existence.
The next day the city was freed of the
diabolic, vampiric infestation.
And not a single vampire ever entered
the city again.

Bob Boyd