Age has decimated him,
a powerful man in his youth,
fearless and a hero in wars.

Now he stumbles around,
weak and muttering,
his power and bravery
gone,

his heroic days barely
remembered, his life
fading away.

Bob Boyd

Every so often, I find a stink bug struggling to stay alive
in my ten-gallon aquarium.

Luckily for these stink bugs, I’ve always been able to
save them.

Fortunately for these stink bugs, they’ve never had their legs
bitten off by any of the fish in my aquarium.

Sometimes I wonder if these stink bugs have death wishes
or if some events in their lives have made them suicidal.

Maybe some of them have been jilted by their significant
others, and they decided to end their miseries in the deep.

Whatever the case, whatever the reasons, I suspect my
ten-gallon aquarium will, like the Golden Gate Bridge,
keep being a location of choice for stink bugs to keep
trying to end their lives.

And I’ll keep scooping them out of the deep.

Bob Boyd

He claimed he had attained cosmic consciousness
and could look into people’s eyes and take them there.

I knew he had had a mental breakdown, a disconnection
from reality, by his erratic speech patterns.

And he spent the rest of the time I knew him in and out
of psychiatric wards in hospitals.

There are or were spiritual adepts in India called masts,
who got so spiritually high when they attained the Oneness

that they could no longer function on the earth plane
and had to be taken care of, though revered.

The prevailing questions are were they mentally ill
or fully enlightened, did they have bona fide

spiritual experiences or counterfeit ones,
or were their mystical experiences a combination of both?

I don’t think anyone can definitely say for sure
in all of these cases.

And maybe in some of these cases what
seemed like breakdowns were breakthroughs.

Bob Boyd

Some descriptions of the afterlife
make it seem like you’ll be somewhere
walking on solid ground.

One could easily conjecture that it’s
souls floating around, probably
blissfully.

No matter how hard I try to visualize it,
I always fall short.

Sometimes I think I could get a breakthrough
but so far not even a peek.

It would be cool if you had a choice
of your afterlife when you passed
through the doorway of death

and were presented with a brochure
of various choices.

I’d opt for a soulmate in a heavenly paradise
on solid ground.

Of course, it could be that the afterlife
is merely everyone dead under solid ground.

Bob Boyd

She was said to be a good, Godly woman.
Her husband was a music director in their church.
He got a mistress. She got 2 bullets to the head.
He’s arrested for murder. She is dead.
The evidence is overwhelming, looks like prison for him.
And if his mistress was involved in the murder of his wife,
she will turn on him and he on her in court, each
trying to save their own skin, the romance over.
As a Christian, he probably believes in hell,
but might think he can get a pass from Jesus
with some real or fake prayers for repentence.
Were I Jesus, I wouldn’t let him off the hook
in a hell he would cook.

Bob Boyd

She was a model student in high school
got good grades, made the honor roll
graduated with an A average
attended an Ivy League college
graduated with a degree in Liberal Arts
majored in English Lit
minored in Hate America Radicalism.

Bob Boyd

From a stream to a river
from a river to a sea
from a sea to an ocean
like the progression
from self consciousness
to cosmic consciousness.

Bob Boyd

Sometimes I see women in dreams, maybe
I’m lonely, lol, but I don’t think so.

She was petite with black hair and cute, which
I find more appealing than beautiful.

I remember in the dream she wanted to talk to me,
and I was hoping it was about something romantic.

But I couldn’t read her and feared it was about
something to do with business or rules.

I woke up before I had a chance to meet with her
and solve the mystery.

My luck, just when things start getting interesting
with a woman in a dream, I wake up.

Maybe I’ll meet her in a dream again tonight and
we’ll go strolling through a paradise hand in hand.

Yeah, I know, I’m literally a dreamer, lol.

Bob Boyd

When I was young and knew many women,
not all romantically, of course,

a playful woman was so much fun
and so endearing,

whether a romantic partner, a friend,
an acquaintance or a co-worker.

Their playfulness added more zest and
more joy into everyday living.

Alas, I won’t be meeting anymore playful
women in this life, far as I know,

but I hope to meet some in the afterlife,
which to me would be heavenly.

Bob Boyd

Saw a YouTube video entitled Rich People
Getting Eaten by Animals.

Most were middleage men who built
extraordinary financial empires

with sprawling mansions and immeasurable
lands and resources.

It was tragic to see all that they had built
gone from a single wild animal attack.

One was taking a walk on his spacious
land in a forest, which seemed safe,

but unknown to him, a mountain lion was
silently stalking him.

Then the mountain lion leaped out of hiding
and pounced on the man.

Within minutes, the wealthy man was
multilated and dead.

The title about rich people getting eaten
by animals

was surprising to me because I never imagined
the rich being killed by wild animals.

And it was sad to see and hear about four
of them going out in such a horrible way.

Bob Boyd

I can see by the way the fish in my aquarium
is swimming erratically, he’s dying.

I saw a politician at a congressional hearing,
and I could tell he was dying.

His appearance had death written all over it,
his trembling voice was like a trembling death knell.

So far, I can tell that despite my 80 years of life,
I’m not as close to dying as the fish and the politician.

But with the days flying by and my body wearing down,
surrepticouslly and slowly, the days is coming

when I’ll be joining the fish and the politician
in the afterlife, a mysterious spirit world or the cold ground.

Bob Boyd

He loved her dearly,
but he couldn’t get
along with her hateful
three kids.

He knew they hated
him, saw him as a
rival for their love.

Unfortunately, her
annoying kids
made loving her
impossible for him.

He left her with no
regrets and finally
had some peace
of mind.

Bob Boyd

Despite how scary the howling of wolves
can be in movies,

wolf attacks are rare.

But if a wolf has rabies, or if you provoke it,
you might get attacked.

Fortunately, when wolves see us as bipedial,
they associate us with predatory animals,

like bears

and are unlikely to attack us except in
rare cases,

like if they have rabies or are provoked.

Bob Boyd

I saw you in a dream last night,
looking like you did 30 years ago.

You were cordial but distant, and
we both took walks in different directions.

At the end of the dream, you ignored me
to talk to another guy.

I felt a little devalued and maybe
a bit jealous.

I woke up realizing the you I saw in that
dream was not the far older you of today.

Next time stay the hell out of my dreams, lol.

Bob Boyd

You bought into the lure of her charms
and her seductive beauty and body.

You fell in love with her, blind to
her true nature deceptively hidden in her brain.

Nor did you see the end coming when
she became quarrelsome and difficult,

when she schemed to leave you
for that more monied man.

If only you could have had x rays eyes to peer deeply
into her brain and accurately read her designs.

And based on that intel, see the inevitable
betrayal that would shatter your trusting heart.

Bob Boyd

Man, how I loved the British Invasion,
some of the greatest rock bands on the planet,
playing their great hits everywhere.
Oh how I pine for those days again when
everything was less chaotic, less divided.
But, alas, those days are gone forever
and we’ll never be able to get them back.

Bob Boyd

I’m watching a video about sand cats.
Three of the cutest kittens ever
with big inquisitive eyes
are huddled together in a row.

A venomous snake is slithering
menacingly toward them.
The kittens don’t run or cry out.
They remain huddled together,
maybe unaware death is approaching.

The snake slithers nearer
and bam! strikes one of the kittens,
way too cute to die.
The kitten immediately falls over
convulses for a moment and dies.

The mother, who has sensed the
danger, appears from out of nowhere,
charges the snake, bats it with clawed
strike after strike until the snake
slithers away.

She picks up the dead kitten and
puts it somewhere away from predators
who would devour its dead body.
Meanwhile, the snake slithers back
intent on killing another kitten.
And the raging mother intercepts him.

Neither the mother or the snake back down.
The mother crouches inches from the snake’s
head, fury in her eyes, looking directly into its eyes.
She’s so close to the venomous snake’s deadly fangs
that I fear it’s going to shrike her and kill her.
But she’s far too fast for the snake, easily dodges
its strikes while parrying with deadly claw strikes.

The back and forth goes on for about five minutes
until the snake battered, bleeding and torn,
tries to slither away.
But the mother knows she has to finish it,
otherwise it will come back to kill her remaining kittens.
She catches up to it, claws it into submission,
and bites its head off, justice and a gratifying finish.

Bob Boyd

It’s like a crow apocalypse outside my apartment,
caw, caws everywhere on the ground and in the air.
I wonder what the crows are about with all their
constant crow chatter.
Are they partying like human hedonists, or is it
like a massive, human family gathering?
A neighbor I talked to long ago when
one of these huge crow gatherings happened,
said he thought they all arrived when
someone had passed away that day.
I kinda like that superstitious rendering of it,
but I cannot stretch my mind enough to believe it.
So, I’m sticking with it’s something akin
to a massive human family gathering.
However, they are probably here looking for food,
recently fallen from trees or rising from the ground.

Bob Boyd

They’re dying off
becoming extinct
an entire generation
the known and the unknown
the famous and the infamous
reduced to bones in a boneyard
hardly even remnants
of their life histories
their successes and failures

eventually we’ll all be unknowns
no matter how famous today
or still famous from centuries ago
when enough time passes by
ten to ten thousand years
in eternity’s wink of an eye
fare thee well, bye bye
to you and to me, eventually.

Bob Boyd

I keep surrendering this
kundalini energy to God
for a sanctioned completion
yet that never comes
perhaps I’m surrendering it
to the wrong aspect of God
the finite Personal instead
of the infinite Impersonal.

Bob Boyd