Poems by Bob Boyd

I listen to a playlist I created on YouTube,
old songs I never tire of, songs like:

I Don’t Want to Live Without You by Foreigner

I’d Really Like To See You Tonight by Dan and John Ford Coley

Nights Are Forever Without You by Dan and John Ford Coley

Missing You by John Waite

I Can’t Make You Love Me Bonnie Raitt

I Go Crazy by Paul Davis

Laughter In the Rain by Neil Sedaka

Second Chance by 38 Special

Right Down the Line Gerry Raffety

And many more songs from the ever distant past,
that keeps passing faster and faster leaving
me and all those songs far behind and facing away.

But to me these songs sound today just as
fresh and new as they did back in their day
when they were hits on the charts, as if
I’m oblivious to the fact that those songs I
love are no longer fresh and are decades old —

as if I’m stuck in a musical time warp.

Bob Boyd

She put the thought form of her essence,
all that was good, loving and beautiful
about her into the cosmos.

She considered this practice she made
up like her psychic pheromones,
an experiment to connect with and
bring the love of her life to her
via preternatural means.

She practiced sending her psychic pheromones
into the cosmos daily for six months
until when she was about to give up and
thought her experiment a foolish failure.

But on that day a man mistakenly bumped
into her at a grocery store embarrassed and apologetic.
and conversation and a love at first sight ensued.

A few dates later, she knew … she knew … her
experiment had worked, and she had found the
love of her life.

Bob Boyd

Imagine if like flowers and tree leaves
reborn in spring, reincarnation is real.

Imagine if nobody ever goes to a hell,
an eternal damnation with no way out

locked in to suffer endless torments forever
without any chances for reprieves.

Imagine if all sentient and maybe insentient forms
had a chance to eventually live in eternal bliss conscious

akin to the highest heaven, and that all stories
ultimately had happy endings.

Though I can’t say if reincarnation is real or unreal,
and I wouldn’t want to come back in the midst of

a nuclear holocaust or something akin to Stalin’s
purges or the Killing Fields of Cambodia

I like the idea of everyone eventually having redemption through various life corrections, a school for souls

until they got it right, graduated, and reached the heights of spiritual perfection,

what the Hindus call Sat Chit Ananda –
Eternal Bliss Consciousness.

Bob Boyd

They hovered over that wild west Texas town in April of 1866.

They were looking for a genuine western gunslinger.

When Wild Bob Walker beat an hombre to the draw and shot him clean dead in the center of the town, the aliens beamed down a large circular light that covered Wild Bob and sucked him into their triangular shaped UFO.

They whisked him away to their planet, 1,000 light years from earth, and got there in seconds.

A great catch, they featured him in their Extraterrestrial Zoo as a main attraction.

Sold out tickets for a year, mainly because of how terrifying the strange specimen looked

and how fast that monstrosity could draw his primitive weapons out of their holsters and pull the triggers of those empty guns as the tiny and spidery, googly-eyed zoo visitors expanded and chortled with the greatest delight.

Bob Boyd

If you’re crazy or brave enough to walk through Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery at night,
you get the eerie feeling you’re not supposed to be there.

It’s deep in the forest and the road to it is closed off, and when you cross the threshold into it,
you feel like you’re in a strange forbidden world, and the spirits are restless there.

An old farmhouse that’s like a mirage might materialize momentarily before you, and you might see the ghosts of gangland hits that allegedly were dumped in a deep algae-covered pond there.

And maybe you’ll see the lighted orbs that come floating out at night, blue, red, white, orange and all colors and sizes.

Some people think they are spirits, but nobody really knows what they are for sure.

Maybe there’s a rational explanation for these orbs that would debunk the paranormal claims, but whatever the case, at least they’re not malevolent and won’t try to possess you — far as I know.

But if you go there, cross your fingers, just in case they might, to seek some luck and be armed with the holy cross.

Bob Boyd

A widow she lives alone
her husband of sixty years
died a year ago
and is buried in
Forest Lawn Cemetery
she visits his gravesite
except when it’s raining
like her tears that keep falling
she thinks of him
and feels like crying again
and wishes she had died too
and it’s been so unbearable
starting her life all over
alone and without him
she hopes and she prays
she’ll be with him again
after all those happy years
that were mostly like heaven

dying from a terminal cancer
she lays down in her bed
closes her eyes and
feels her life ending
she opens her eyes
right before she dies
and sees her husband
above her in white light
smiling and holding out
his hand toward her
her soul leaves her body
she smiles and takes his hand
and hand in hand heart to heart
they float up to heaven
in love and married forever.

Bob Boyd

Pounding of drums
gyrating of hips
swirling of bodies
whirling of long thick hair
hands moving eloquently
as if hands could speak
eyes occasionally looking up
somewhere between
the pounding of drums
the gyrating of hips
the eyes looking up
the mesmerizing effect
the trancelike feeling
I realize the hula
is more than a dance
a spiritual practice
a form of worship
to whichever deity
or deities out of the
hundreds of gods
and goddesses
in the Hawaiian
spiritual tradition
the dynamite dance is
zealously praying to.

Bob Boyd

Cursed forever
victim of a vamp’s
vampiric bite
I rise from the grave
every dark night
fanged creature
ghoulish soul
hideous intentions
mesmerizing gaze
subdues my prey
and obediently
they surrender to me
without hesitation
without reservation
they offer me their
inviting jugular veins
my fangs pierce
and I imbibe
and sate myself
on their warm
invigorating blood
the hunt for prey
continues until
I’m caught and
slaughtered
with a stake
only to be reborn
a fresh vampire
in my next life.

Bob Boyd

Also called Stamps Cemetery located in
the mountains of East Tennessee.

Some graves new, many old
and decaying,
made of sandstone.

Inverted stars on a few graves,
mistaken for pentagrams,
which is why the cemetery is
wrongly thought to have
evil witches buried in it.

Some old Tent stone graves,
two long thin slabs propped up
against two triangular caps
at the ends, often with
headstones – maybe to protect
corpses from animals. Maybe
just tradition.

Many people named Stamps
buried there, one named
Stanford Stamps born in 1811,
died in 1895, age 84.

No witches, only about 80
regular people buried there.

Many tombstones from the 1800s.
More are new.

No ghosts, maybe the Stamps
Cemetery is too boring for them,
or the good religious mountain
people all went to heaven
instead of hanging around dead.

Some old graves had flowers
in front of them. Many had coins
on the tops of the tombstones.

Perhaps the coins were symbols
of good luck in the afterlife.

No one seems to mess with the
coins, perhaps for fear
of being cursed or
out of profound respect
for the dead.

The cemetery is serene
with only the sounds of
birds chirping in the background.
Perhaps the birds are singing
sweet dirges for the dead.

Got a good peaceful feeling
seeing that cemetery on YouTube,
wouldn’t mind being buried in a
peaceful cemetery like that
when I die.

Bob Boyd

Six young women in their teens
beautiful dancers at Ziegfeld Follies.
Futures bright, big dreams of
becoming famous and successful.
The world was theirs.

Made a pact in 1916 to meet
at a restaurant in New York
in 1936 to talk about their
successes in those 20 years.

Olive Thomas, Fifi Alsop,
Martha Mansfield, Lilyan Tashman,
Kathryn Lambert and
Bessie Chatterton Poole
were their names.

Olive Thomas died in 1920,
ingested a poison by mistake.

Fifi Alsop died in 1922,
alcoholism combined with
a drug for sleeping.

Martha Mansfield, died in 1923,
burned to death in an accident.

Lilyan Tashman died in 1934,
Abdominal Cancer.

Bessie Chatterton Poole
Died 1928, Heart Disease.

Kathryn Lambert, only one
who survived for the meeting
in 1936.

She probably said a silent
prayer for the others who
weren’t there and wondered
why they had such tragic fates
that stole the dreams they
had when they were teenage
Ziegfeld Follies dancers
and the world was theirs.

Bob Boyd