Presumably you have more brains than a fly,
and unlike a fly, you can read and write,
talk, sing, and do many things a fly cannot,
except stick to and walk up walls and fly.

But maybe when you breath you last breath
all those superior advantages will slip away
when your heart stops beating, and you die
just like a fly and become as insignificant.

Bob Boyd

I’ve been living so long that I no longer fear dying.
I see it as the awakening of a lifetime or, maybe

better, the relocation of a lifetime with perks like
seeing and hearing a Jimmy Buffet concert for free,

or perpetual peace and bliss in an ethereal paradise
with the soulmate I never found in this life like

the elusive forever afters the fairy tales held the
promise of but never delivered for me.

At the very least, I’ve lived long enough, sucked
enough life out of this existence, and I long to

see and experience what I see as the mysteries
and the wonders of the great beyond.

How about you, reader wearing blue?

Bob Boyd

Some people say when we dream we astral travel.
Maybe that’s true, but I don’t think we do, and

I’ve never had any sense of living my body in
some kind of ethereal, OBE dream. For example,

one day I was watching a woman doing ASMR
in a YouTube video, and her ASMR was soothing.

That night I saw and felt her in a dream performing
ASMR on me, which I see as a dream memory of

what I observed/experienced during the day.
Of course, I’ve also had dreams that had nothing

to do with what I saw or experienced during the day.
And I have had many dreams about woman I’ve

never met or known. Now maybe I met them during
astral travels, but, if so, I wish I could see them again.

Bob Boyd

His days speed by like cars racing on the Indy 500.
His body, with 90 years of use, is breaking down
like an ancient, outdated Ford Model T car.
He’s lost most of his hair and some of his breath.
If he falls on the floor, he cannot get up, and he
prays he never falls in the bathroom with his
head hitting the hard floor, but sometimes he
almost wishes he would as much as his life
is near nonexistence and he’s in constant pain.
Tired, as usual, he eases into an arm chair
and prays to God to take him away from his
barely tolerable, pain-ridden, miserable life.

Bob Boyd

The old man shuffles down the corridor on a walker
and wonders where his wife is who died a year ago.

He’s in a nursing home but doesn’t always know
where he is.

He’s medicated twice daily, and when he’s cognizant,
plays bingo in a well carpeted room with other

residents, whose names he sometimes remembers.
And when he’s self aware while playing bingo,

he thinks to himself —

how the hell did I come to this?

Bob Boyd

many of them dreaming dreams
envisioning their bright futures

some of them dead before they’re
old enough to dream

some can never dream any dreams
born too incapacitated

some are murdered in the midst
of their dreams

the fortunate realize their dreams
the unfortunate never do

maybe we dream beautiful dreams
in the afterlife

dreams that come true

Bob Boyd

In his twenties, Jonathan’s avowed goal in life was to become a great poet, and he was well on his way to achieving that goal:

he had many poems published, won a few contests, and was completely committed to his craft.

Because there wasn’t any money in poetry unless you became renowned and sold many poetry books,

he had to work at odd jobs to get by financially.

One day, after being lonely without a woman in his life, he decided to try a dating app.

But he learned most of the women on the app were mercenary and couldn’t lower their financial requirements by going out with a

low-income poet, despite the fact that Jonathan was a caring, honest, and loving guy who would have been an ideal boyfriend

or husband for any of them. Disgusted with the greedy women on the dating app, he gave up on women and decided to stay solo

until, at a poetry reading, he met Melinda, who loved his poetry and was more about true love than money.

After a year of dating, Melinda and Jonathan got married, and friends who knew them said they both were lucky to have found

ideal marriage partners who were about true love instead of riches and material things.

Bob Boyd

Alena was sixteen and a good high school girl who believed in saving her virginity for marriage to the right guy.

She went out once with a guy named Mark who tried to take
advantage of her, and when she resisted him and refused

to see him again, he told everyone he left her because
she was too easy, let him have sex with her on the first date.

Because Mark was outgoing and popular in high school, many
believed his lie and disrespected Alena and made her cry.

Though Alena was a good girl, she had a bad-ass big brother,
named Antonio who was trying to become a Mafioso.

When he heard about Mark’s lie about having sex with Alena, he swore he’d avenge his sister’s honor.

A week later, Mark disappeared and was never found by the police, volunteers or search dogs.

Antonio was never connected to Mark’s disappearance, but
right after Mark vanished, he became a Mafia made man.

Bob Boyd

I see them in cities rushing to and fro,
consumed with their lives, their joys,
their sorrows, their problems, their solutions.
But in the end when death takes us all,
none of it will matter. Freed from the
rushing to and fro.

Bob Boyd

Rory was always the daredevil in high school.
Once, seemingly supernaturally, he climbed
a near vertical brick wall, how I don’t know.
Another time he stood balanced for 10 minutes
on the roof of a car doing 55 miles per hour.
Miraculously, he pulled it off, and he always
survived his deadly risks and never stopped
taking them. But one day his luck ran out when
strolling through a city park on a peaceful
summer’s day, a limb of a tree fell on his head
and ended Rory’s life. Everyone who knew
Rory always said what an irony the guy who
survived all those deadly risks died that way.

Bob Boyd

A genius in his family of factory workers,
he aced his classes in high school, made
the honor roll in every grade, became the
class valedictorian, got a 4 year scholarship
to MIT, but after a year, he saw he didn’t fit
in with his classmates from wealthy families
who drove expensive sports cars and had
more spending money than working people.
He found the class disparity suffocating and
socially oppressive, so he dropped out of
MIT and used his genius to invent gadgets
and became a successful and wealthy man.

Bob Boyd

He bought a box of Cracker Jack caramel coated popcorn
and peanuts that he had bought for over thirty years.

Most of all he liked the prizes at the bottoms of the boxes,
and in the last box he ever bought a tiny unicorn was in it

that blew up into a real unicorn and took him for a ride
into a glorious unicorn wonderland that felt like heaven,

and he was never seen in this world again.

Bob Boyd

He’s in his late seventies and still wears his freak flag,
long hippy hair, and he’s lucky he still has it.

He still listens to Hendricks, Iron Butterfly and other
great bands of the sixties and seventies.

Photos of Meher Baba, Ram Das, and other spiritual
notables of the New Age grace his apartment walls.

He disdains all the sellouts who left the movement
and went to work for the Man,

like his ex hippy girlfriend violet did when she left
him in a commune in 77,

like the leader and the members of the commune
who gave up on the dream.

But he still has great memories of the Age of Aquarius
and how lucky he was to have been a part of it.

And that gets him by, and he hopes when he dies
the afterlife will be a rebirth of those glorious days.

Bob Boyd

the annoying people
the jerks you knew
the bad experiences
in your life
the wrong people
you were involved with
the mistakes you made
that you wish you hadn’t
the medical problems
you may have had
or could have had
if you lived much longer
the different paths in life
you may have wished
you had taken
the end of pain
the end of sorrow
the end of suffering
and maybe the
beginning of
unconditional love.

Bob Boyd

I’m re-reading Bukowski. I like
how he doesn’t fill his poems
with too many flowery words,
and he usually writes with
what was once called plain
English that is so pleasing to
read, though I can appreciate
that often the flowery words
skillfully applied are high art.
Getting back to Bukowski, I
can see how some people
could see his poems as crude.
And his lifestyle wouldn’t have
worked for me, but damn! he
was one hell of a poet.

Bob Boyd

When he died, she was beatific,
his beautiful gold digger girlfriend,
and she was dreaming about
all the money she’d get in his will.
Hovering above his body, he read
those thoughts in her head. And he
knew he wasn’t entirely dead, and
when he came back to life and was
discharged from the hospital, he
left her and cut her out of his will.

Bob Boyd

In the tenth grade all the guys wanted to be with
her. I did too.

But she walked around with a snooty look on her face
all the time that telegraphed she was too good for us.

I was almost believing it. I was almost believing she was
too good and too beautiful for us.

But when she reached the twelfth grade and put on a lot
of weight, the magic was gone and none of us wanted her.

And she no longer walked around with that snooty look
on her face.

Bob Boyd

I’m back in my wild days
drunk out of my mind at
a club. A friend thinking
he’s helping me calls
my ex-wife, a bad idea.
Because she still loved
me, she came to the club,
but drunk as I was and
pissed about how she
treated me when we
were married, she saw
that it was best for her
to get the hell out of the
club instead of putting
her nose in my drunken
business. After she left,
I told my friend an enemy
could not have done me
a more grievous injury,
though I knew he felt
he was just helping me.
And I can still remember
how my wife saw the look
of disbelief in my eyes
when she showed up at
that club. In retrospect,
I kind of wish we could
have kept the marriage
together, since she loved
me that much despite her
always being out of the
house with female friends
when we were married,
and I was lonely together.

Bob Boyd

She came from a family of lawyers, but she
wanted to help people for a living as a social worker.

At age 15 when her parents asked her what she
wanted for her birthday

she said nothing for myself, but I’d like you to buy
gifts for the kids who live in the poorest part of town.

So on each of her birthdays thereafter, her parents bought
gifts for those kids in the poorest part of her town.

At age 21 when she was studying in college to be
a social worker, four men stole her car with her in it.

They drove her to a secluded area, raped her and
murdered her.

If there’s a loving God, where was that God for this young
woman who was compassion personified,

and why did such a sweet soul have to die being
raped and murdered to death?

Pisses me off. And I pray with all my heart that when
she died that horrible death that she went to a place so

blissful, so peaceful, that the way she died didn’t matter
and wasn’t even a memory.

Bob Boyd

He rocks back and forth in his old
wooden rocking chair,

thinking about his years navigating
the high seas

when he was a captain of a cruise
ship and saw many countries

and met thousands of people, one
of them his deceased wife who died

at age seventy-seven of the Covid
virus that almost killed him too.

He misses his wife everyday and
wishes the virus killed him too.

Now he just rocks back and forth
in his old wooden rocking chair

and prays to God to take him to
heaven to be with his wife.

Bob Boyd