Poems by Bob Boyd

Mikey ignored the rumors
that the old lady

who lived in the
old Gothic house
secluded on the
edge of a forest

was a witch

though he had
to admit

she looked like one

his friends dared him
to throw a rock
though one of

the windows in her house

not one to chicken out
he snuck up on
the old lady’s house

in the dark of night
when all the lights
were out in her house

and he heaved a rock
through a second floor
window
and sprinted away
so he wouldn’t
get caught

but that night in
his bed
he saw and heard
the old lady

cackling like a witch
in a nightmare …

right before his body
exploded in flames

and smoldering burnt ashes
were
his only remains

Bob Boyd

Sometimes I like writing dark poems. I loved horror movies when I was far younger. But I didn’t like the slasher movies or the gore-fests. Hammer Films was my favorite with real stories that had a lot of substance and good scares. I rarely watch movies nowadays, but I like writing horror-like poems sometimes. Sometimes with humor or absurdities in them.

He grew older
and older
and kept
wrinkling away

lost his muscle mass
his youthful strength
his stallion virility

in his muscled up youth
he never
believed he’d get
weak and scrawny
one day

but at least he
kept working out

without the pump
without the gains

he had in his muscular
younger years

he resigned himself
to the muscle
and strength losses

by knowing soon
he’d die
and believing
in the afterlife

he’d be strong
and muscled up
again

Bob Boyd

This is all me. Man, how I hate how age has reduced the muscle mass that I used to have. I wasn’t bodybuilder muscled up being an ectomorph. But I had decent muscles for my body frame without resorting to chemicals. And I didn’t wear clothes to try accentuate my modest muscularity compared to that of the mesomorphs.

And as a slender guy in regular clothes it wasn’t obvious I worked out. Now as an old man who still works out but with bands and dumbbells for curls, I don’t look like I ever worked out, lol. But, despite age reducing my muscles and me making no gains anymore, I still benefit immensely from working out and feel more alive and mellowed out.

he thinks or says things
like wow
nice legs

holy moly she’s
so hot

and I wonder if
the female bettle

has beauty enhancements
like perfumes and
lipsticks

or if unlike human
females

she’s born with those
enhancements installed

and has no need to
improve upon her
natural beauty

Bob Boyd

I’m kidding around here. I write poems about many things, even insects sometimes. And I lie giving insects human like behaviors in some of my poems about them. For example:

Stink Bug on My Computer

A stink bug just flew on my computer screen.
though they’re grotesque looking, I like them.
but I must admit the first time I saw one
It looked so bizarre it startled me,
wondering if it was harmful and would sting or bite.

Rarely had I seen a weirder looking bug.
It had kind of a threatening don’t touch me look.
We don’t have them where I’m originally from,
just outside of Boston, MA in the milder burbs.

Despite not knowing if it was harmful,
I couldn’t kill it, just coaxed it onto a tissue
and walked it outside my apartment
into the freedom of a warm summer’s night.

After I learned stink bugs were harmless,
I grew to like them, as I like the one
that just soared off my computer, tiny wings flapping,
airborne for a few seconds in lamp lit skies,
and it landed on a runway somewhere behind me.
In a little while he might land on me.

Maybe he’ll sit on my shoulder like a best pal
and watch YouTube videos with me and listen to 30s music
and tearfully tell me how he can’t meet any female stink bugs online.
I’ll say I feel your pain, been there with female women. Never going back.

Maybe after he pours out his love life miseries
and cries for a while on my supportive shoulder,
I’ll tell him he’s a handsome enough stink bug
to find a decent and beautiful female stink bug
who will be his true love and treat him like a prince among stink bugs.

And maybe I’ll adopt him as an exotic pet.
I wouldn’t tether him to a restraining leash
or stick him in a four-sided oppressive aquarium,
or imprison him in a soul crushing, miniature cage;
that is if stink bugs have souls, which I imagine they do.

But mercy me I don’t know what I’d feed him,
and I doubt I’d find stink bug food at PetSmart.
I could probably find him some food on Amazon,
hopefully with a five gold stars rating
and next day shipping between 4 and 8 am.

I hate that it has such an undignified, unfitting name.
I would have jazzed the name up with some Latin,
like Incredibilis Insectum or maybe something more relatable
like Super Cool Bug or Bug That Only Stinks If You Mess With It.

And by the way, stink bugs only stink If you
harm or try to crush them to death,
as if harmed or dead they get the final say.

Bob Boyd

Some people aren’t happy
unless they’re making
trouble for others

they’re psychology has
to be terminally
screwed up

they seem to confuse
being happy with

being unhappy

piling woe upon woe
upon themselves

but mostly on others

and God forbid if ever
you get tangled up

with one of them

pray you can get out of
their sticky webs

before you can dragged
into more

trouble and sorrows
than you ever

could have imagined.

Bob Boyd

This poem is about people who have annoyed the hell out of me and others. People who seem to live and breathe to make trouble, as if that were the sole purpose of their lives.

I even saw/experience this with an elderly couple me and my agency tried to help. No matter how hard you tried to help them it was never appreciated, and they always were trouble with every agency they sought help from. And they badmouthed all the agencies that tried to help them.

My thinking for them was even if you’re a miserable, mean and trouble-making, SOB, at least fake being halfway decent when you come to an agency seeking help.

So nice to travel by train,
compared to by plane,

seeing the scenary
leisurely instead of

high in the sky
with barely a view.

No airpockets, no fears
of falling from
the sky.

I’ll take traveling
by train

over by plane

any day.

Bob Boyd

Alas, this used to be my dream, traveling cross country in a train, sleeping on it over night, and dining in it on the way. The best would be watching the scenery passing by all the way across the U S of A.

I won’t do this because at my age I now longer desire to travel, and I don’t have the money for a cross country trip, and I won’t use my savings. And if I had the money, I wouldn’t spend it on a train trip. But it was a nice enough dream to write a short poem about.

Were I to see directly
and in person

the way
chickens are
slaughtered

I’d probably
become a

vegetarian.

But I’ll never
see that
undoubtedly

terrible sight

because I
like eating

chicken too much.

Bob Boyd

At first

the petals
are closed

but ever so
gradually

they softly begin
to open

and once they
are fully opened

in full nonresistant
blooming glory

a season of
ecstasies.

Bob Boyd

after years of abductions
and probes

and attempts to rewire
and rehab

the human race

the aliens packed up
their belongings

and abandoned
their bases

in the mountains
under the ground

and deep in the sea

they concluded the
human race

was impossible
to warbreak

and abandoning
all hope

they flew back
to their planets

and left the
human race to

its doomsday fate

Bob Boyd

they were married
for seven years

attended church
together

didn’t have children
but had six dogs

they rescued from
an animal shelter

to friends and
neighbors

they were a happy
couple

and looked perfect
together

both exceptionally
attractive

but unknown to
those who knew
them

they were cheating
on each other

and in their unseen
future

one would murder
the other

Bob Boyd

The great mountain began crumbling.
Mud slides began sliding.
A roar issued out of the mounatin.
Trees, boulders, rocks roll in the
river of the great mountain’s roar.
In the midst of all that chaos
with humans safe on high ground,
a tiny dog runs in front of it all
barely ahead of the falling death.
Maybe he escaped with his life
but nobody knows for sure.

Bob Boyd

At the
pet store
he spied
a beautiful
fancy goldfish
staring at him,
like it was
beckoning him
to buy it.

Even though he
already had
two fancies,

he bought the
compelling,
fancy goldfish
and placed it
into his
40 gallon tank
with his two
fancy goldfish.

The next
morning one of
his two fancies
was dead,

which seemed
premature
to him, but
he shrugged
it off, thinking
sometimes
fish and
people die
unexpectedly.

A day later,
the other
fancy died.

He checked the
water in the tank;

it was okay.

He checked to
see if any
fish diseases
were in the tank.

None.

That night he
saw the new
fancy goldfish
in a nightmare(?)
sitting on his
chest,

(it’s eyes
demonic red),

psychically
sucking
his life force
out of him

until he
gasped,
trembled
and died,
a horrified
look frozen
on his
pale face.

Its infamy
finished,
the new
fancy goldfish
swam back to
its terrifying
astral abode,

a godforsaken,
fiery hell.

Bob Boyd

Everything was
wonderful
at first.

And she
looked so
incredibly
beautiful to him.

But after
about six months
the wonderful
began
to wane

and her
beauty wasn’t
as mind-blowing.

But it was
still good and
he wanted to
keep it alive.

Unknown to
him, she was
feeling the
same way.

But unlike
with him,
she had
gotten bored.

And left him
for the highs
of a
brand new
love.

Bob Boyd

When you’re young
and good looking,
it seems like
your looks
will last forever.

But you start
seeing the
fault lines
in the bedrock
of your belief
as you get
dragged into
your thirties.

But not quite.

The forties hammer
it home a little
more,

but, if you’re lucky,
you still might
look good.

Barely.

Past fifty the
loss is way too
apparent, even if
you go under
the knife.

So disappointing.

If you make it
past seventy
and you look
in the mirror,
you’ll have
a hard time
believing you
are that
old woman
looking
back at you.

Those good looks
gone –
forever.

Bob Boyd

I always knew you’d
come here someday

mature woman,
youthful, old soul,
hair of gray,
lovely in
countless ways.

And I knew I’d be
thinking if only
we met

when we both
were younger

and had enough
time to spend
a lifetime together,
soulmates through
the years
and the seasons,

maybe even forever.

But, alas, I know
I was just
imagining you,

but it gave an
imaginative old man
some sweet
and pleasant
thoughts and

another fanciful
might have been.

Bob Boyd

Summer’s in for
the fight of its life

and it’s heating up
September with
ambitions to live

into December,
to have a first
Summer’s Christmas.

But Fall and Winter
have different plans.

They tag team Summer,
knock it out cold in
med September.

And Summer stays
knocked out until
July and

wakes up
determined to have
its first Christmas
again,

which it has
been doing

since the
seasons were born

and the fight will
begin and end
the same way
as long as

there is the sun,
the moon, the earth

the seasons
and the heavens.

Bob Boyd

All the way through
grade school and
high school
Leah made A grades

and always knew
she wanted to be
a doctor.

She got accepted
at The University of
New Mexico School
of Medicine with a
scholarship.

In her second year
she fell in love
with a student named
John Nettles,

who was a member
of a cult.

Seven months into
their relationship

John convinced Leah
to join the cult.

A year later, Leah
was brainwashed
and dead.

She died holding
John’s hand in
the cult’s
mass suicide,

and the members
believed they would
return to life in a
better world on

a distant planet
and live there

young and happy
forever.

And all of Leah’s
plans evaporated,
her dreams dead,
her becoming a
doctor —

NEVER.

Tragic how
sometimes one’s
dreams can be
sabotaged by

ANOTHER.

Bob Boyd

Mary had a little lamb;
she also had a beau.

Her lamb followed her
everywhere. Her beau
was just so so

and jealous of Mary’s
friendship with her
faithful lamb.

After many fights with
her beau about her
friendship with the lamb,

Mary realized she had
to choose between
the lamb and the beau.

But when Mary was
at work baking a
plum pie

for a customer named
Jack Horner,

her beau kidnapped
her lamb, drove him
50 miles away to a
lamb slaughterhouse.

When Mary came
home, he told her
her lamb had
run way.

But what her beau
didn’t know
is Mary had had
her lamb
microchipped

and she saved
her lamb just in
time as he was
about to be
slaughtered.

She kicked her
beau out of her
house,

said I don’t need
no man,

and her and her
lamb

lived happily
ever after.

Bob Boyd

No more problems,
hassling your head.

No more enemies,
won’t need friends.

No more having to
hustle for money,

won’t need any
when you are

dead.

If you were a
son of a bitch
in this life

no consequences,
no haters,

if dead is
dead.

Bob Boyd

she no longer got
the lingering looks,
the constant glances.

Lusting men no
longer wanted
to sleep with her.

Even the mirror
no longer
was wowed
by her.

In a way, when
her looks
vanished, it was
as if she
vanished too.

But though age
stole her looks,

as it does with
everyone,

in my opinion,
she probably
got hotter.

How could I
write such an
impossibility
you ask?

I say with all
the years
she’s lived, she
probably got
a lot hotter

inside her head.

And, think
about it,
beyond the
superficial,

what makes
her the hottest
is the part of
her you
cannot see.

Her beautiful mind.

Bob Boyd

When I first head
of Dogman,

the idea of a Dogman
seemed ridiculous
to me.

Given all the Bigfoot
sightings, I could see
that idea as plausible,

but Dogman, no way.

Yet the reports of
Dogman sightings
keep rolling in,

especially in
Ohio.

As the sightings
keep increasing,
it gets harder
to be skeptical,

sightings all over
the U S of A
and even
in Canada,
according the the
North American
Dogman Project.

And the fact there is
a Dogman Project
suggests

that Dogman might
be real, and surely
it is real to those

who founded the
project.

The project and
all those alleged
sightings

imply I could
be wrong
in not believing

Dogman is real.

And if you are
a believer in this
canine wonder,
you are

probably right.

Bob Boyd

If you like information and poems about the paranormal and cryptids, consider taking a look at my Bigfoot Blog with fiction and nonfiction poems about Bigfoot.