Poems by Bob Boyd

I hear the train rumbling by my apartment.
I feel it too.
It shakes the entire apartment building a bit,
even though the train track is about 300
feat away.

Some trains just clatter down that track.
They don’t make a stir in this apartment
building, but you can always hear then
when they pass by.

Sometimes when I hear or feel them, I
wonder what it would be like to be on
one of those trains headed for whether
they go.

A spontaneous adventure to some distant
location.

Maybe to almost heaven West Virginia.
I drove through parts of WV before, and it
did look like almost heaven.

Or maybe the train would stop at Richmond,
Virginia.

I’ve been there, and when I was there it seemed
like a nice city, a great place to live, but that was
about sixty years ago, and towns and cities
have a way of changing with the years.

Sometimes for the best. Sometimes for the
absolute worst.

The train. The rumbling. And the shaking
have passed.

Everything is back to normal again, even my
thoughts of getting one on of those trains
and going nowhere planned.

But I would like to be on a train with sleeper
car someday going somewhere I’ve never been.

Bob Boyd

Worked out 3 times a week for decades,
and he wanted to work out tomorrow,
but with his 3 times a week workout
he had to wait till Sunday.

Then he got an idea. Break with your
workout tradition and work out every
other day. And maybe despite low T
you’ll see some meager muscle gains.

It seemed almost like a sacrilege to
the sacrosanct 3 days a week workout,
and he wondered if it could lead to
overtraining with attendant symptoms.

But he researched it and found every
other day was better for muscle growth,
and maybe it would jump start his
old muscles and pump up some gains
despite the low T and the sarcopenia.

Now he’s excited and can’t wait till
tomorrow to start his new every other
day workouts.

And since he loves to work out, more
will be more than welcome to him.

Bob Boyd

The rain beating down on that hotel roof in a city in Germany
on November 9th, 1958, felt to him like the tears of thousands
of jews on Kristallnacht, when homes and business were ransacked and destroyed.

In his mind he could hear all the glass shattering as businesses
and homes were broken into by the Nazi Party’s Sturmabteilung
and Schutzstaffel paramilitary forces. He imagined he could
hear the screams and the cries of confusion as the Nazis did their devil’s work.

He cried tears with the rain in remembrance of his mother, father,
sister and brother who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp not long after that.

Later that day he toured Auschwitz in the rain, lingered there
and shed more tears over the beloved members of his family
gassed to death in the gas chambers. He wiped his eyes,
shook water off his yamaka, and prayed another Holocaust would never happen again.

Bob Boyd

He was hiking in an unfamiliar forest with a friend
named Jeff, and the forest became eerily quiet.
The birds stop singing. The insects stop buzzing.
And there was a feeling of danger in the air.

He turned around to ask Jeff if he feels the danger.
And Jeff is gone, gone in a moment. No sounds.
No cry for help. Nothing.

He hears a slight hum above the trees.
He looks up and sees what appears to be a
V shaped UFO. Then it vanishes and the humming stops.
The forest becomes alive again with the sounds
of the bugs and the birds. And some birds fly out of a tree.

He runs to the Park Ranger’s office and reports Jeff missing.
Before long the forest is full of search and rescue dogs,
trackers, police and volunteers.

He tells the police what happened, but he sees in their eyes
and hears in their words that they think he murdered Jeff.
But although he’s a person of interest, they have nothing.

A year later, he hears a knock on his front door. He opens it
and Jeff is standing there, but he’s not the Jeff he knew.
His eyes are vacant and he’s acting and talking like a robot.
He fears the aliens in the V shaped UFO he saw after Jeff
went missing abducted Jeff, and now they’re after him.

He runs past what used to be Jeff, leaps into his car and speeds away
to a motel in the town next to the town he lives in.

He spends a week hiding out at that motel until he gets up
the courage to return to his apartment. It’s safe. Jeff is gone
and he never sees Jeff again. He reported the incident to
the police, but they never found Jeff or what was posing
as Jeff, and he never went hiking in a forest again.

Bob Boyd

Since I know some things about transcendence
and spiritual experiences,
I often think I should be beyond the human need
for romantic love.

I should be more about the Oneness, the nonduality,
the eternal bliss consciousness that supposedly
is beyond conditional love and is everlasting.

I should be clearly aware that even if I found
the love of my life at 80, it would only be
temporary when one of us died and left the other unlike
the permanence of eternal bliss consciousness.

Maybe it’s a deficiency in me that sometimes makes
romantic feelings arise and hope that those who don’t find
their true loves in this life find them in the afterlife.

Maybe I’m more a romantic than a mystic
despite my 24/7 spiritual experience.

Maybe I’ll be a romantic mystic when I die
and ride unicorns in crystalline skies in
expanded states of consciousness with
a long awaited soulmate that is heavenly and
perfect in every way for me.

More likely, I’ve been listening to too many old
love songs today, lol.

Bob Boyd

Always liked how the song title
All My Ex’s Live in Texas sounded.

I never had any ex’s in Texas
nary a girlfriend nor a wife.

But I’ve been to Texas,
lived there 3 times:

San Antonio

Basic training in the Air Force,
hated basic training and didn’t
really get to see the city.

Amarillo

More training worse than basic.
Young people in that city hated us,
and I hated them for trying to
beat up airmen who visited the city.

But, in retrospect, I can’t blame them
for hating us back then;
some young servicemen away from
home are drunk and disrespectful
and bring trouble to a city.

Dallas

In my experience, cool city with cool
people.
Driving was crazy, like reckless cowboys,
but after I adapted, I was liking it
as a young man who enjoyed the thrills
back then.

Wasn’t there long enough for an ex or a
permanent girlfriend or a wife. It
would have been a cool western love
affair if I had with some romantic
country music song as our song,
like “It’s Your Love” by
Tim McGraw & Faith Hill.

But I wouldn’t have wanted a love
that turned into an ex love there by my
choice or hers.

And I wish people never had
ex’s in Texas and all over the world,
and that true love could always be true.

Bob Boyd

pay exorbitant costs for cable tv

watch Netflix after it hosted the movie cuties

travel 8,000 miles for love again

drive thousands of miles

work out with heavy weights anymore

seek a woman on a dating site

or misuse the sanctity of church by going to one just to try to meet a woman
though maybe one day I could get so intolerably lonely I’d sacrifice my principles on the alter of love, lol

be a joiner of anything

be controlled by anyone

be a fan of any celebrities

think of myself as better than anyone

stop believing in our country often you get the justice you can afford

be okay with politicians who get rich as public servants and seem more like opportunists than patriots

try to be better than others at anything

feel the need to try to get my poems published

have a fear of dying

believe that a religion or spiritual path is the only way

believe a loving God would ever send anyone to hell or be okay with eternal damnation

take testosterone replacement therapy
though I wouldn’t mind having the extra T

watch sports any more that are violent
though I used to be an avid fan of combat sports

go to a senior center
senior centers just don’t work for me

stop working out and giving up on fitness

get overweight

stop eating ice cream, chocolate and occasionally pastries
can’t see being too spartan when it comes to
sweets

stop drinking coffee

stop taking 48 grams of protein powder daily and vitamins and supplements

hang out with guys and shoot the breeze
don’t feel the need for male comradery
and small talk daily bores me

except with a woman I love with whom
small talk forever would be enchanting

give up on living and feel like killing myself

drink alcohol or get high on drugs

insult people in person or on the Internet

lose my temper in an auto accident or a close call

stop writing poems as long as still I’m able to keep writing them

Bob Boyd

a man is singing on youtube
about how he might be falling in love

it occurs to me i have forgotten
that most euphoric feeling

and haven’t falling in love for over
15 years

and that i listen to romantic songs,
my favorites, way too much

right now i’m listening to an old romantic
song by the babys

every time i think of you

and oh how it moves my heart
and i am almost able to imagine

the feelings, the needs, the wants
in those loving words

speaking of thinking
sometimes i think to myself
maybe i shouldn’t listen to those
songs that harken back to times
when i knew the ecstasy, the highs, of
falling in love and how good it felt

so i find an ac/dc hard rock song
on youtube, turn up the volume
on my computer,
and blast those sappy feelings
out of my overly sentimental mind

just kidding

i’ve reached an age where hard rock
and raucously loud music no longer
appeal to me

so i stick to mellow soft rock romantic
love songs like the one i’m listening to
now about a guy who wants a second chance

and i’m feeling his sincerity as though i
wronged a woman’s heart and i’m pleading
with her to take me back

i laugh at foolishness of that
my heart out of control for a moment
and i end this poem

bob boyd

last night in a dream
i had a conversation
about war with a man
as bizarre as that
may seem

i said one would think
by now humankind
would be beyond wars

he disagreed and said
war is in our genes
humans are innately
violent and
we’ll always have wars

i said no way, screw you,
and punched him in the face

just kidding

sadly the dream guy may
have been right

but i look for a better
future where humankind
will evolve beyond
the senselessness of wars
and the killing of one another

though it may be just
a dream

bob boyd

i saw in the news that a 47-year-old man
was gored by a bison at
yellowstone national park

he was one lucky 47-year-old
he only had minor injuries
after being gored by an animal
nearly as heavy as a chevy
that can run faster than
one would imagine

he got too close to the bison
within twenty-five yards

according to the news
if you get that close to a
behemoth bison it will defend
its space
a scary thought

i can understand how cool
it would be to pet a bison
and given the obsessions with
selfies nowadays, i can imagine
for some people that
would be uber cool

as for me
if it is big, wild and potentially dangerous
no way am i going to get anywhere near it,
though i’ve gotten within twenty-five yards
of women dangerous to my heart
i don’t risk the fragility of my life

one or two people get too close to bison
(had to check the plural on that)
yearly in yellowstone national park
i can understand the lure
bison are beautiful animals
that can seem docile and approachable
and it would be so cool to be able to pet one
were that safe, i’d like to pet one myself

bob boyd