Even female insects are choosy
when it comes to a
suitable suitor, an ideal beau
some female insects
are probably stuck up
and what’s a male bug to do
if he isn’t born with
the right stuff
the lady killer charm
to easily woo female insects
of his insect species
maybe he becomes a monk
insects don’t have monks
you emphatically say
how do you know that’s true
do you speak insect
are you privy to their secrets
their hidden beliefs
can you read their minds
but let’s say you’re right
then what’s a male insect
to do who hasn’t got game

Bob Boyd

Of course, I’m kidding around here. My inspiration was from watching a video about those tiny jumping spiders, one of the spider species that doesn’t creep me out. I saw several males trying to mate with what must have been a most desirable female jumping spider. She rejected the first two but accepted the third.

This made me think about how it’s the same with female humans. It also made me think that romantic love with humans, not unlike with insects and all the other species, is more about procreation than the hearts and flowers our brains and hearts make of it — though I’d rather that wasn’t true.

Off with their heads! Off with their heads!
Bring on the notorious Beheading Machine!
Cleaner and more efficient than an ax.
In seconds the head cleaved from the body.
Kinder than the Breaking Wheel, quicker,
less painful too. Named after a doctor,
Dr. Joseph-Ingace Guillotin, who ironically
was opposed to the death penatly.
Curious it was named after him, perhaps
the French thought his name had
a perfect diabolical right to it: Guillotine!
Why the French put n e on the end of his name
for this diabolic machine, I know not.
But it does sound fancier, more memorable.
The real inventor’s name, Dr. Antoine Louis,
just wouldn’t do, too bland, less dramatic.
Guillotine. Guillotine. Monstrous machine.

Bob Boyd

He never had any use
for old women,
called them old hags.

Until he became an
old geezer, his good
looks gone.

And old hags became
beautiful, mature
women to him.

Bob Boyd

He Never Believed in Ghosts Until He Jogged through an Old Cemetery One Night

While jogging in a quiet moonlit night, he decided to take a shortcut through an old cemetery.

He didn’t believe in ghosts and wasn’t superstitious, so he had no problem jogging through the land of the dead.

After a few minutes, he sensed a presence behind him and
he saw a ghost running after him.

He ran as fast as he could but felt the ghost gaining on him. He sensed if it caught him, he’d become a ghost too.

Just as the ghost was about to grab him, he reached the cemetery gate, and the ghost stopped chasing him

as if the ghost could not run past the cemetery grounds. He ran fast all the way home, relieved to be safe

until he went to sleep that night and saw the ghost still chasing him in a nightmarish dream.

He woke up screaming, felt a stabbing pain in the middle of his chest, and died of a heart attack.

Now he’s buried in the same cemetery he jogged through,
hopefully not with the ghost still chasing him.

Bob Boyd

Markus said he was fed up with the single women
in the USA.

He said he met too many of them on dating apps
who were shallow and all about the money,

who overvalued their worth on the dating market, treated
men as if they were disposable and unworthy of them.

So he went to Thailand in search of a beautiful, non-mercenary and humble Thai woman.

He lucked out his first night there, met an incredibly beautiful Thai woman in a bar in Bangkok.

It was love at first sight for him and for her, made love their first night together, got married a week later.

He bought them a house in Thailand, as a foreigner he had to buy it in his wife’s name, but he was good with that

He was older than her and she’d still have the house when he most likely died before her,

But shortly after the sale, his wife kicked him out of the house and moved her Thai boyfriend in.

And there was nothing he could do about it. He moved back to the USA, his dreams shattered,

gave up on dating, but spent the rest of his life pining for a perfect woman to magically walk into it.

Never happened, not even a close call, and he went to his grave a woman-less, miserable man.

Bob Boyd

The hike was long
the day sweltering
the sun beat down
like a hot hammer
on the earth anvil
Jim was getting
dehydrated
disoriented
he lit a cigarette
that fell from his hand
as he passed out
that started a fire
but Smokey the Bear
put it out and
revived Jim with
some Spring water
and saved his life

Bob Boyd

I’m like an idea machine. Ideas come into my hear easily. He just started this poem with “the hike was long” and the rest just fell into place. Of course, I had to do drafts until I got it right, right for me, but I like the way it turned out.

She met him
on a ghost tour
at the old abandoned
Hanson House
haunted as hell
he spooked her when
she first saw him in spirit
though his handsomeness
amazed her
dazed her
and quelled her fear
telepathically he said
the right and sweet words
wooed her from
the afterlife
made her his earthly love
now Helena says he’s
her soulmate
and she’s so smitten
with him
that to seal their love
she plans to kill herself
and join him forever
in the ghost world

Bob Boyd

After reading and hearing so many reports of ghosts, especially on old Art Bell Shows, I’ve come to believe in them. As I began writing this poem, I was reminded of a woman who claimed she’d been married to a ghost, and though I don’t believe she was, the idea of a human married to a ghost gave this poem its impetus. And I believe it’s not far fetched to think someone would be okay with suicide to be forever with their spectral soulmate.

until she roped him in with
her sweet kisses
her charming ways
she domesticated his wildness
she tamed his rebelliousness
now he’s like a horse in a corral
restless and ready to leap out

Bob Boyd

This poem was written about guys who love a variety of women and how many they can score with and have a hard time being faithful to one. It was a case of old habits die hard when one woman had domesticated him, and he began to feel penned in after the new love excitement died down. Now maybe his woman reformed him, her man, or maybe he returned to his playboy ways.

how the hell can that be
body of a super buffed man
head and face of a terrifying dog
are these people delusional
on drugs or pranking
I could accept the plausibility
of a Bigfoot
but a Dogman is beyond me
though I may have to change
my mind
as the sightings keep increasing
and maybe all these cryptids
are hoaxes by wiseass aliens
or maybe they’re … interdimensional

Bob Boyd

Whether true or bogus, I like reading about cryptid sightings. They make for good fiction and folklore and, who knows, some or all of them just might be true. And, if true, I lean to them being interimensional.

appear every so often on my YouTube page
It seems there’s an inhaustible supply of them

They are alluring and most of them are waving
their hands doing ASMR

They are nice to look at but I don’t get attached

I’m too old to be yearning for a young woman
and too much of a realist

Besides I’ve been with more than my share of
women in this passing life

But I’m not above listening to their ASMR
that is so relaxing and nice

And I hope all of them find lasting love
and live long and happy lives

Bob Boyd

Sometimes, though I’m an old man now, I think I’d like to be with a woman again. And I miss the days when the young pretties were not decades out of my old orbit. But I’m a realist and not about lusting after them, though, like fine art, I can appreciate their flowering beauty. But, I’m wiser than ever about how that beauty is transitory and, like once blooming flowers, will all too soon fade away. More’s the pity, I say.

But if the NDEers are right and death is a glorious afterlife, everyone looks young again there.

In the dream, you looked like a woman
I had known

But you were more fun than she
had been

I was getting a feeling I haven’t had in
a long time in the real world

I was feeling a possible connection
Others in the dream were feeling it too

At one point, we were standing in front
of many fish tanks in a store

And you said there was an exotic fish
in one of them

the name I cannot recall

I said no way

you said yes way

and showed me the beautiful fish in a tank
a few tanks away away from where we stood

I found it funny and wonderful that you were right
and being with you had become such a delight

the dream ended with you taking a right turn
I presumed to go to the ladies room

and I woke up seeing the right turn was into
the living room of my apartment

and of course there was no you

And I was sad and wishing the dream
had been true

Bob Boyd

This poem is about a real dream I had last night. It was like when you are talking to someone and everything begins to feel right and you sense a romance is lingering in the air, which it often is in those compelling conversations. I was liking this woman so much and I’m sure she was liking me as much. But, damn, what a buzzkill the dream was when I woke up right before the sparks began to fly and the chemistry began to bubble. And to the deity, angel, or whatever, in charge of dreams, kindly give a guy some dreamworld love.

Twice I’ve had near misses with
Death

once a murderous blood cancer
tried to kill me slowly
perhaps it

was sadistic and wanted to
draw out my passing
for its ghoulish pleasure

the second time, my heart
went a little crazy
electrically

out of sync with its
two chambers

and I was told by a doctor
I could die at any minute

medical interventions saved
my life both times

months of cancer treatments
pills and infusions

a pacemaker for the errant
heart

I don’t believe I’ll have any
more near misses

because either I did instantly
maybe in sleep

or if the cancer returns
I let it do its thing and
slowly kill me

rather than prolonging my
life any more medically

Bob Boyd

I worked with the elderly for over twenty years, and from my experiences and general observations of people aging, in my opinion, living too long can eventually become a losing proposition for most people: Your quality keeps diminishing; your body keeps breaking down more and more, like an old, worn out machine; you may lose the ability to take care of yourself; you could be sent to a nursing home, or you lose your mind, your sense of self, to a heartless, ravenous dementia.

And I believe there comes a point where being kept medicaly alive just isn’t worth it – along with the exorbitant costs, physically, mentally, and monetarily.

but in my thirties when I was a jogger,
I took a shortcut one night

through a small cemetery
a 5 minute run

and though I didn’t believe in ghosts
and saw none in the cemetery

jogging (actually running)
through that quiet cemetery
scared me so much

that I almost could feel
my hair standing on end

Bob Boyd

After listening to many accounts of people who experienced ghosts, or claim they did, on the radio program Coast to Coast and many other accounts at different YouTube videos and websites, like ghosts in light houses, I’ve become a believer in ghosts. But what I don’t understand, if ghosts are real, why would they haunt a musty, old house? Were I a ghost, I think I’d travel to many different places. I definitely wouldn’t be a homebody ghost.

By the way, here’s a poem about a residual ghost:

Lucy

Lucy was as fair a woman as a woman can be.
She passed from this life at only twenty three.
On the day of her marriage to Charles Porter,
She tripped on her wedding gown on a stairs.
She died when her head hit the bottom step.
Now she wanders day and night in her wedding gown,
As if still trying to get to her wedding that never happened.
I’ve tried to communicate with Lucy about going to the Light,
But she never seems to acknowledge my presence.
Perhaps Lucy is only like a film replaying day and night.

Bob Boyd

A woman takes a casual walk
in a park
a tree falls on her head and
she dies instantly

a woman gets off work at 9 pm
and is kidnapped and killed by a serial killer

a family is having a meal in a
fast food restaurant
a crazed shooter shoots
them and others dead

a man is driving at the speed limit
on a two-lane highway
a truck swerves into him
and he dies in the wreck

Oh how I hate the randomness
that makes so many people dead

Bob Boyd

I’ve read about so many cases where people die from random events through no fault of their own. Nothing they did to deserve their unexpected, unpreventable deaths. One could say it’s just Karma, but I think if Karma exists, it’s more complicated than that. I think a lot of things that happen in this world are just random with no reasons for them — like the woman walking in the park, killed by a tree.

The other day

I saw in a YouTube video
a long list of all the celebrities

I saw on TV and in movies
as I grew up

from childhood to my
teenage years and into adulthood —

who had passed away

most I didn’t know had died
and I got sad and depressed

that they were all gone

and that they and all the great
entertainment they brought the world

was gone forever

but it made me look forward to the
last day of my life when

I’ll be joining them

Bob Boyd

Though I’ve become a recluse and I enjoy my life, like in the poem I do look forward to the day I die and join those icons and people I knew who are now on the other side. I’ve lived a long
enough life and getting old has many downsides for most: medical problems, medical examinations and seeing doctors as your body breaks down and you become more likely to have medical problems.

I see death as a release from all that, and I’ve read in many NDEs that on the other side in spirit you are young and vital again.

So, Death bring it, I say. 🙂

He was seventeen
handsome as a movie star

had a near supernatural
ability at playing pool

he could run racks
for hours without missing

and I never saw him lose
even when he played

the expert pool playing
old timers

he also had tons of charisma
and seemed a born winner in life

but an auto accident ended all of that
before he reached age eighteen

but maybe he won at living too
and got to a glorious existence

sooner than most of us

Bob Boyd

This is a true poem. The young pool shark was as I described, and I couldn’t believe his life ended so soon.

Decades later, with a lot of knowledge about near death experiences, I believe for most the afterlife is as many NDEers describe it: Incomparable, unconditional love, more real than this existence, and our true home that once experienced you want to spend forever there.

I believe those that are not the most, like a Hitler, go to a lower plane of existence and do a sort of penance there but eventually ascend the planes like climbing up the rungs of a ladder and reach what the NDEers call Source, the incomparable unconditional love etc cetera.

“Look forward to your transition, it’s the first time you will experience unconditional love.”

Elizabeth Kubler Ross

and I hope you are somewhere
heavenly

in the afterlife

I hope you are peaceful and
happy there

without a care

if there’s romantic love
on the other side

I hope you found it there

Bob Boyd

This is a brief poem about an ex-wife who died in her early fifties about twenty years after we got divorced. She was a smoker, and I fear her early death was related to that, but I don’t know for sure.

She was probably the nicest woman I’d ever been involved with, but I am an introvert and cerebral. She was an extrovert and, though intelligent, not interested in deeper ponderings as I am.

The everwidening gulf between us happened because she had gotten a new job and met many new girlfriends and began hanging out with them so much that I was home alone too much.
And, for me, the marriage became more and more lonely together, which eventually led to a separation and a divorce.

But that aside, I was sad to read in her online obituary that she had died a few years after her death. I had just done an Internet search to see if I could find her, never expecting she had died.

Bob Boyd

are not about monsters

crazed ex-girlfriend

demons or night hags

or being in hell

they are about working again

I have been retired going on 3
years now

and

to have a dream where I’m
working on a job again

is like a nightmare to me
maybe because it’s like

losing the freedom of not
having to work any more

that I have and cherish

Bob Boyd

It surprises me that I feel that way when I wake up from those dreams. When I worked, I was extremely driven and never wanted to retire. Initially I had planned to work till I couldn’t work any more because of an infirmity, my mind too dulled by age, or by death. Yet, once I was retired I enjoyed the freedom of not being under anyone’s control – no bosses over me – that I knew I could never work again. Now I work for myself writing poems everyday as a hobby. And I kinda feel like I did in my twenties, free and happy.

A man named John Rhodes
aka CriptoHunter

claims there are creatures

he calls reptoids

He says they have

scaled skin
slightly large craniums
two slits or almond shaped eyes
ears like small holes
flat wide nose
lipless mouths
muscular bodies
4 to 6 digits on each scaled hands
some with tails
some with no tails
heights from 5 ½ to 9 feet

If real, they don’t seem hostile
more like ET than klingons

but terrestrial instead
of extraterrestrial

It’s all quite fascinating
and either good sci fi
or incredibly real
You can read more about it
at The Reptoids Research Center

Bob Boyd

I heard of reptoids while listening to Coast to Coast this morning, and found John Rhodes quite likable, seemingly extremely knowledge about all things paranormal, and he seemed legit. But I have a hard time believing in reptoids. However, real or unreal, true or false, I find this fun and fascinating.

A guy I used to work with
said he only
slept with prostitutes

he had no use for
having a relationship with
a woman he could
have real love with

I found his choice
surprising and empty

and asked him why
he didn’t choose to be
with a woman

he could have a romantic
relationship with

like I looked for and most
men desired and searched for

he said, “You get the drama.
I get the sex without it, and
overall I pay less for it.”

I could see his point and
thought about the benefit
of the no drama

but, hell, I couldn’t see the
empty sex without love.

Bob Boyd

I actually knew a guy I worked with who was like this. He just wanted sex without any commitments and, as he said, without the drama. Though I could somewhat see his point, it seemed like an empty life with empty sex and never the joys of romantic love. But, alas, sometimes with romantic there is a lot of drama and sometimes there is a broken heart. His heart, far as I can see, would never be broken — unless he fell in love with a prostitute who rejected his love.