Her death caused him unmitigated sorrow;
she had been his wife forever, or so it seemed.
Without her he was lost. And he felt like he
could no longer live without her and her love.
He put a pistol to his head, but didn’t have the
courage to fire it, and put it away. So he lived
out his life in angonizing misery and died alone.
Maybe he found her in the afterlife. But many
say his ghost roams his house looking for her,
as if he never found his wife forever in death.

Bob Boyd

In four years he’ll be 85,
his hopeful expiration date.
He knows living too long
is a losing proposition.
He sees dying as an awakening,
and he longs to experience it.

Bob Boyd

She’s gone forever
never coming back
all that’s left of her
bones in the ground
under a headstone
but I believe she’s
a liberated spirit
in a better world
reborn forever in
unconditional love
and eternal bliss

Bob Boyd

Streams of annoying commercials
with radio program interruptions.
God how I hate FM radio now.
It’s become such a hassel just
to listen to a program
without being bombarded by
endless, tiresome commercials,
which is why I no longer listen
to FM radio any more.

Bob Boyd

It took only 2 years for it to awaken,
straight to the crown of my head.
Yet with over 50 years of rising
it has not completed,
blossomed into cosmic consciousness.

I learned recently the reason;
it can take years or decades.
The nervous system and the mind must
be purified enough to sustain the Oneness.

This makes sense to me, as it could
be overwhelming if it completed prematurely.
One’s nervous system and mind in crisis,
a trip to the ER or a mental health facility.

Bob Boyd

Many young English women
wearing colorful dresses
perfectly made up
sweetly perfumed
some showing too much
of their goods
some with too much of
their goods hanging out
laughing and carousling
a party night in LIverpool
a few drunk on their feet
some dancing in the street
enjoying the excesses of
their soon gone youths
oblivious to any sorrows
and inevitable heartaches
living for the moment
enjoying life while they can
as if the party night will
last forever and ever

Bob Boyd

Old London Town now a city
chaotic and dying
Big Ben looking down
with a frown on his clock face
tears at 3 and 9 am
yet another week of stabbings
an 18-year-old English lad
lies dying on the ground
bleeding out from 5 wounds
stabbed randomly by a
crazy sikh carrying a knife

police are roughly cuffing
the innocent English lad
ignoring his dying pleas
he asks for an ambulance
and he’s telling them
he’s been stabbed
one cop says I don’t believe
you mate

they think he started a fight
because he is white
and the sikh guy who
has a darker skin hue
is innocent because of
his darker skin hue
(that’s how it is in not
so merry London now)

they take the sikh’s word
and the handcuffed young
brit bleeds out on the ground
and dies in front of the cops
the sikh gets a prison sentence
the British cops have yet
to be punished and they
might never be

and Big Ben’s chimes sound
like anguished cries for the
London he knows has fallen
and will never be the same
as it was in its saner days
when good British citizens
and concerned patriots
were not treated like pariahs

Bob Boyd

You always looked so beautiful
when I saw you at various events.
In retrospect, I think you were into me.
Though we didn’t know each other,
except for a few words from you.
I didn’t see the significance of those
brief words back then.
Besides, you were married, and I
was respectful of that.
But, oh how I wonder how things might
have been if you had been free
and really were into me.
And I still remember how beautiful you
looked when I saw you at those events.

Bob Boyd

He said he had no fear when he boldly
entered the forbidden hollow.
They warned him of invisible monsters
that lurked in the hollow at night.
Poppycock, he said and marched into
the darkness of it laughing.
A scream minutes later, and he was gone
and has never been found.
But sometimes at night folk say they
hear his invisible cries for help.

Bob Boyd

Salvador Dali had a wife
who was a marketing genius.
She turned him into a brand,
and they made a lot of money.
Thanks to her his fame spread,
and he became worldly renown.
His wife cheated on him with
many other men.
But he stayed with her despite
her many infidelities.
And he tried to make more
money to keep her.
It must have worked because
she stayed with him till she died.
Sadly, near the end of his life
Dali could no longer paint.
Tremors stole his artistry away,
his hands shaking too much.
At least he had more success
than most artists.
And though he died in 1989,
his fame endures.
And his surrealistic paintings
are worth millions today.

Bob Boyd

I remember her last resigned gasp,
The awful rattling in her throat
The end of her, the end of everything,
Without her, I wanted to die too.
For ten years I’ve had endless laments
Never ceasing in my love for her,
Never loving another woman,
True to her as if she never died.
Now with a deadly stage 4 cancer
My diseased life coming to an end
I hear a voice, see a pretty face
My Love smiling and waiting for me.

Bob Boyd

Stella, sixties star
soared in the skies
maybe too close
to the sun

all in hippie
dressed the part
flower prints, tie dyes
psychedelic colors
did LSD, meth and
other drugs too

A few bad trips
tired of freak outs
sought the Truth
In the spiritual oasis
mother India
found a guru
Shri Swami something

three years later
returned to Cali
enlightened
she claimed
looking crazier
more screwed up
then when on drugs

vegan thin to the bone
worryingly skeletal
then came the day
she claimed she had
siddhis (super powers)
I can fly she said

eyes lit like flashbulbs
sadhu dreads disheveled
kinda zombitized

a day later she flew
off a ten story building
and the Stella I loved
and will never forget
took her final trip
into the Great Unknown.

Bob Boyd

Li Po and Du Fu I admire what you do
or I should write did.

You poems are without peer
profound and so clear

It amazes me you wrote such
masterpieces of poetry way back
in the 8th century

If I could travel back in time
I’d like to be mentored by
both of you maybe on
top of the Green Mountains

And maybe if we had
the time and the daring
between creating works
of poetry in the literary
landscape of the Tang
dynasty

we could
go on a quest
for the dragon pearl.

Bob Boyd

I was living a stone’s throw from Harvard U. in Cambridge, MA, in the midst of various emerging spiritual groups, mostly out of India.

A friend and I visited a group called Ananda Marga and met their group leader, a Harvard student named Ollie.

Blonde hair, thin, decent looks, average height, and blue eyes that seemed capable of holding the secrets of the universe.

Ollie’s head perpetually moved smoothly from side to side, and you knew he had attained some kind of advanced spiritual state. It wasn’t BS. It wasn’t an act. It was like something you’d see in an advanced sadhu in India.

Ollie was experiencing a perpetual manifestation of kundalini energy flowing from the base of his spine to the crown of his head.

I’d never seen anyone before Ollie who genuinely experienced that outside of meditation so powerfully. With kundalini energy, it’s common to experience such things in meditation and to always feel the energy rising outside of meditation to varying degrees – sometimes six feet above your head.

Never having experienced the full fruition of this energy, but having read Gopi Krishna’s account of his full-blown awakening, I can say such manifestations are only partial awakenings.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if Ollie attained a full awakening and cosmic consciousness in his lifetime.

Bob Boyd

Songbirds, such as sparrows, don’t have much of a chance to live long lives. Predators kill 70 percent of them before they reach old age.

How I hated to read about that. Sweet singing little birds’ lives snuffed out, always having to worry about being killed. Awful way to have to live.

How I hate that part of nature. How I wonder why a Creator set things up like that.

If I didn’t believe in a benevolent God, it would be easier to accept the tragic deaths of little singing birds. Though I wouldn’t like it, I’d reason that’s just the way it is.

But it saddens me that those little birds don’t have much of a chance in life, and always have to be fearful that a lurking predator is going to end them forever.

And I hate how there is so much carnage in nature.

Bob Boyd

I spy a ladybug
on top of my bathroom mirror.

Every so often, a ladybug
invades my fortified apartment.
I’m glad they’re not spies,
as far as I know.

She’s eyeing me now
and I know what she’s thinking.

“Um … is this some Caucasian mountain god,
tall and mountainous as he is?”

She sees me nick my cheek with my razor
and the tiny spot of blood that debuts.

She thinks to herself:
“Though this strange species
towers over me mightily,
it’s a lesser god than mine
because it bleeds.”

After her disparaging assessment,
she somehow, magically, walks down
the mirror like Jesus walking on water
and doesn’t fall off, as I or any living
human would, except maybe Jesus.

I see she’s preening herself in the mirror
and liking her reflection a little too much.
I never knew ladybugs were vain.

I’d like to kick her out of my apartment,
but it’s too cold outside,
and despite the fact she’s an intruder,
I don’t want her to freeze her ass off—
that is if ladybugs have asses.

So I just bid her farewell as I walk to my
computer and write this kind of ode to her,
while she’s probably still obsessing over
her looks in my bathroom mirror.

Someday I must school her on the fact
that looks fade and her personality is more
important than her fleeting looks.

Maybe tomorrow, if she sticks around.

Bob Boyd

The older I get the faster time goes by,
a year just passed, as if it were only a few months.
I’m getting older at warp speed, but I’ve reached a
point where I no longer care.
After all, at my age I’m sort of just hanging around
waiting to transition.
And my body, like an old, outdated machine, becomes
less and less efficient each year, stiffer and weaker.
So Time, keep going faster and faster, get me to the
spirit world sooner where I’ll be young and born again.

Bob Boyd

Though I live in a small city,
Greensboro, NC,
often at night when I go to
my car, I see rabbits.
It amazes me they live
in this city.
There are not any
forests nearby.
Yet they seem to survive
and even thrive.
I usually see them close
to my parked car.
When I see them I feel
moved to befriend them.
I softly whisper gentle
words to them.
But despise lingering for
a while, they run away.
Maybe some day ….

Bob Boyd

Suddenly, unexpectedly, I’ve
become interested in art.
From creating many images
with AI Image Generators,
and using various art genres,
I developed an appreciation.
For example, yesterday I
learned about Gauguin.
Originally an impressionist
but started his own style.
Limited fame in his lifetime,
lauded after his death.
Times of plenty of money,
times close to poverty.
But a true artist to the
end of his complex life.

Bob Boyd

When she reached age 77, her love
had gone out of her.

Maybe it was biological, her essence
dried up.

Maybe she had just given up on finding
lasting love.

I felt my love could have enlivened her
and revived her life.

But, alas, she didn’t see it that way,
preferred to play with her grandchildren.

More’s the pity for me and for her.

Bob Boyd