Poems by Bob Boyd

I can understand this. Years back when I was on a dating app,
many women put a price tag on the cost of being with them,

as though they were high class commodities, and if you didn’t
have an exorbitant income, you were like a penniless pariah.

A man won’t get that kind of shallow, mercenary woman,
who overestimates her value, with an AI girlfriend.

She won’t care about your benjamins. She wouldn’t see
you as unworthy if you didn’t have a bloated bankroll.

Here’s my bottom like about this. I believe romantic love is
only for procreation, as it is with all the other species,

so I don’t think it matters whether you have a flesh and blood
girlfriend or AI girlfriend or, if imaginative, even a lifesize doll.

Besides despite all the potential complications and hassles
with a human woman,

romantic love is not going to last, whether through a break up
or the death of you or her.

And maybe, just maybe, one day I’ll follow suit and find the real
prize in an AI girlfriend instead of squandering

my heart and my money on an unpredictable human one. But
not just yet.

Bob Boyd

If I were a male beetle,
would I think some female beetles were hot?

And if I had to go far away, say hunting for food
for a long time,

would I get a dear John from an unfaithful female
beetle, maybe written on a leaf?

And if I had a lot of beetle possessions, would I
need a prenup if I married a female beetle?

I’ll probably never know the answers to any of
those silly questions,

but I imagine relationships would be less complicated,
were I a male beetle instead of a male human,

whose been with more women than he ever wanted
to be.

Bob Boyd

Some people and ufologists
believe aliens created us

as if we were no more than
human lab rats

as if we were no more than
test tube babies

I say bananas to that and
baloney too

maybe you’re an alien hybrid
and that works for you

but as a certified human being
I’m not believing it too

Bob Boyd

Some jump off buildings
some jump off bridges
some drown themselves
some shoot themselves
some hang themselves
some slice their wrists

so many people kill themselves
and some think they go to hell
as if they were deserving of
eternal damnation

I disagree with that
easy to condemn those driven
to such tragic extremes
especially those with chronic depression
and other mental health conditions

I say pray for them
in the afterlife wish them well
don’t condemn them to hell

I envision them in a healing place
filled with mercy and unconditional love
and I believe and trust that I am right
and that they are happy and well

Bob Boyd

She was a sweet blonde-haired woman
who met a dark-haired woman on a dating app
she felt they were a good match after the first meeting
agreed to see her again
after the second date she went missing
until her body was found near a ditch on a lone road
the dark-haired woman had an evil man lover
who killed the sweet blonde-haired woman
when she refused to be involved in his cult
and engage in a threesome with him and the woman
woe to women who have suffered similar fates
when they were only trying to find true love

Bob Boyd

Halfway through July
the days grow hotter
my fans work harder
I hear their whirring
cool enough for me
I don’t need A/C or
its expensive costs
whirring fans enough
for cooled off me

Bob Boyd

Mel Waters said on the Art Bell show
that he had a bottomless hole on his property.

He said he dropped fishing line down 80,000 feet
and still hadn’t hit bottom.

He said he pushed an old refrigerator in it and
it never hit bottom.

He claimed a neighbor threw a dead dog in
the hole and it returned alive weeks later.

Mel Waters, or whoever he was, was a great
story teller which gave his tall tale traction.

And even when he kept on embellishing it,
the tale still sounded real.

I kind of wish the tall tale had been true,
as well told and captivating as it was.

Bob Boyd

At the meditation residence course, he’s meditated
12 times daily for three days with pranayama and
yoga exercises before and after each meditation;
he’s incredibly mellow and totally blissed out.

He’s so high he feels he’s close to becoming enlightened,
and he believes he has attained an unshakable calm
until he leaves the residence course and goes bonkers
when he’s stuck in traffic the next day.

Bob Boyd

They broke up three months ago
she often looks out her kitchen window
hoping to see him getting out of his car
sorry and hoping to get back with her
sometimes she hears a car outside
excited she looks and it’s never him
often she cries missing him so much
but deep down inside she knows that
he is never coming back to her

Bob Boyd

He had dried roses in his coffin
for his wife who died before him
he felt certain he’d take them
with him into the land of the dead
and give them to his wife
when reunited with her there

Bob Boyd

Worldly people don’t care about transcendence
their lives preoccupied with worldly affairs
vacations, ship cruises, tv shows, dining out
obscure thoughts of transcendence
I wonder if their priorities shift
when they phase out of this impermanence
and leave all their worldly affairs behind

Bob Boyd

One man was told he couldn’t sing
by a music teacher.

Another man who wanted to be a painter
was dismissed by critics.

The man who couldn’t sing
became a superstar singer with many

hit records and decades of fame.

The man who couldn’t paint became a famous artist
renown for his post-impressionist paintings.

Though he’s been dead more than a hundred years,
today his masterpiece paintings cost millions.

The singer was Elvis Presley, the painter, Vincent Van Gogh.

Bob Boyd

When I changed my mind
about being with her

and asked her out,

too late … too late, she said.

You had your chance.

I didn’t push it. No always means
no.

After I showed no resistance to
her rejection,

didn’t try to change her mind,

she became interested in me
again.

Too late … too late, I said.
No always means no.

And looking back, I kind of
wish we hadn’t played
games

and just got together.

And maybe, just maybe, we
would have had a lifetime
of lasting love together.

But she is dead now, and I
almost was.

Too late … too late.

Bob Boyd

Beautiful women of every generation
fade away like fall flowers

while beautiful women of upcoming
generations take their places,

only to wilt and fade away as well.

Beautiful women, a tragic example
of how nothing lasts

in this impermanent life.

Bob Boyd

I’m unimpressed with neo-impressionism art;
it’s just not for me,

but I must admit I’m impressed with the artist
Jean-Michel Basquiat who rose from a street

artist painting graffiti on city walls to a famed
neo-impressionist artist and succeed so much

he became incredibly famous. But, alas, he
died at the young age of 27,

but at least he lived a short life of artistic glory
and left a legacy of unique and lasting art.

RIP Jean-Michel Basquiat and kudos to how
eminently successful you became.

She’s Only an AI Image Generated Painting,
post-impressionist, but those eyes … those eyes.
Oh how they mesmerize. Oh how they mesmerize
me, as if she and her eyes were real.

I find myself thinking, wishing, she were real or
if she would become real in one of my dreams
some night, or be real when I die and meet me
in some candlelit, moonlift, romantic afterlife.

But, alas, it’s all just fanciful foolishness. Paintings
only come to life in fictional stores. And I’m just a
lovelorn, foolish old man with delusional ideas
about a post-impressionist AI created painting
of a beautiful woman.

But those eyes … those eyes …. Oh how they
mesmerize.

Bob Boyd

He climbed over the fence into the lion’s
den

and taunted a lion to come to him until
a huge lion growled

and started toward him. When he knew
he was going to die, he folded his hands

in the prayer position for a moment. Then
sped out of the lion’s den up over the fence.

Luck was with him that day because the
lion didn’t pursue him and kill him.

Usually when a person climbs into a
lions’ den, at the least they get maimed.

At the most, they never see this world
again, having been torn to shreds.

Bob Boyd

You see a 70-year-old, white-haired woman get stopped
by the police for a tail light on her car that’s not working.

They have her get out of the car and, unexpectedly, they
put handcuffs on her.

You’re thinking, for a defective tail light? But you don’t know
the real reason she’s cuffed.

Twenty-two years before, and after two months of
marriage to her husband, back then,

she got romantically involved with his friend, who she
appears to have talked into murdering her husband.

The evidence is now airtight despite the elderly woman
or the fake friend of her husband not confessing.

What is not entirely known is the motive, but I suspect it
was boredom and a bundle of insurance money.

That aside, it’s heartening to see that justice sometimes
prevails decades after a case has gone cold.

Bob Boyd

But I cannot believe in one. I think it’s more
complicated than that.

And why would a person born into the world as a psychopath
be judged for something that wasn’t his or her fault?

Same with a serial killer.

Individuals who didn’t have a choice in what they were born
as and whose behavior was ruled by that from birth.

I think the same for most people.

And I think even the choices most people make are
mostly predetermined by the dna they are born with –

or blessed or cursed with.

Given those conditions, I just don’t think people
are judged or condemned when they die.

I think it’s more complicated than that.

Bob Boyd

When he died, he didn’t have a grave marker
because he fell overboard on a cruise ship
into a sea, and his body was never found.
And, far as I know, there are no grave markers
in the depths of a sea.
And even if he had died on land and had a
grave marker, he had no one who would
visit it. So even if he hadn’t died in a sea
and money would have been paid for a
grave marker, it would have been as if
he didn’t have one.
And with tens or hundreds or thousands
of years it’s like that for all those
who have died.

Bob Boyd