Poems by Bob Boyd

Met her in Greensboro Park after dark
Fearless, she approached me first.
Surprised, I couldn’t believe
She was so utterly unafraid
In the scary darkness of Greensboro Park.
What if I were a rapist or a serial killer?

Dressed in a black cloak and a pointy hat,
Her fashion sense an eccentricity.
She started talking about the weather
I liked the sound of her melodious voice.
Her river of words mesmerized me.
As she kept talking about the weather,
I felt myself slipping dreamily away.

Then her words became letters in clouds
and I tranced out and lost consciousness.
I woke up alone, her and my wallet gone.

Bob Boyd

Women go to doctors for every little thing.
Wasting all their money on doctors – ka-ching.
Men avoid doctors like drinking a poisoned brew,
And doctors will only find something wrong with you.

Better to get as sick as a vomiting dog
And croak but not exactly like a croaking frog.
And when you’re dead and no doctor is billing you,
You’ll have saved bundles and bundles of money too.

Bob Boyd

When I was steeped in Eastern spiritual practices
and read about the legendary Tibetan Monks,
it was believed they were the most advanced adepts
possessing limitless supernatural powers.

I believed that when China invaded Tibet the
monks were so preternaturally powerful they
could chant mantras that would cloud the minds
of the advancing Chinese soldiers and erect a
psychic force field they could not pass.
But, alas, Chinese guns and bullets were more
powerful than mantras and supernatural powers.

Bob Boyd

People born with tragically deformed bodies
what in creation is the point of that?

Why are some born so disadvantaged
when most are not?

A person once told me God
doesn’t make mistakes

but perhaps nature is a saboteur
that like a devil sabotages God’s perfect works.

I don’t know why some people suffer
such disadvantaged fates.

I don’t believe it’s a karmic justice
they rightfully deserve.

And I wonder what happens to these
people when they die.

I write that thinking of a bigger picture
like when I read that blind people who

have near death experiences see
when they are clinically dead.

Bob Boyd

days and nights without you
so empty and so forlorn
thought we would be together
in love till our lives ended
with the possibility of us lasting
beyond this life into forever
but your love was only a dalliance
a masquerade of false affections
and I can see I’ll go into forever
without you and believe I’ll find
a true and lasting love there

bob boyd

I wonder how many of my classmates that I graduated with in 1964 at Woburn High School in Woburn, Massachusetts are still alive.

I imagine most of them have died, which saddens me.

Though I was riffraff and a troubled teen back then,
most of my classmates were how I wish I could have
been:

Like those who studied hard and got good grades.

Like those who played high school sports or participated in extracurricular activities.

Like those who behaved and didn’t get kicked out of
classes and school.

Had I been like them, it wouldn’t have taken me years and numerous hard knocks to finally reform myself, have satisfying achievements, and heal the scars that made me a troubled and rebellious teen in the class of 1964.

Thinking about the class of 1964, I’m dismayed about
how many, if not most, of those classmates have
perished and are no more except for memories by those
who cared about them, friends and family.

Though I believe, based on reading and listening to
many near death experiences, that the afterlife is
the awakening of a lifetime,

in this moody, reflective moment it saddens me that those classmates, once young and so alive in 1964, will all be gone … forever.

Bob Boyd

I was hard-bodied lean
and muscled up
as a teenager.

Worked out relentlessly,
liked getting pumped up
with muscles getting bigger
and body getting stronger,
increasing reps,
increasing weight,
stronger and bigger
every week.

Enjoyed the feel of the iron,
the hardness of it.
Didn’t mind the calluses
on my hands,
wore them like tributes
to my workout ethic.

I was hard-bodied lean
strong like the iron I lifted.

But when my first
girlfriend came into
my life back then,
I liked the gentle
weakness I felt
being with her
and thinking about her.

The softness of her love
felt far better than the
hardness of the iron
and made me far more
happy than working out
with iron ever could.

Bob Boyd

Though you’re decades gone and maybe dead and gone
like I almost was

I’ll never forget those kisses as we embraced on the summer’s grass next to the rippling waters of that pond in that small city, Woburn, MA.

Though we never consummated, went all the way, those kisses were more memorable, more wonderful, and far sweeter than

all the consummations, all the went all the ways, I ever had in my entire life.

Though you cheated on me and desecrated our teenage love, I hope you have had a wonderful life. And if you’re no longer living, I hope you are with the angels in heaven.

Bob Boyd

Man, I’m feeling that lyric
I’m imagining the feeling
the elation, the ecstasy
the celestial music
the angelic singing
the trumpets sounding
the bells ringing
the symphony of
unending heavenly bliss
and I can almost
hear heaven too

Bob Boyd

he is told to go to the emergency room
for what he thinks is a minor matter
he’s there for six long hours
but he’s not bother by that
he sees the staff are
overwhelmed with people
most in worse shape them him
or so he thinks

when he finally gets to see
the doctor he can’t believe
the doctor is keeping him
in the hospital to confirm
he has a blood cancer

he can’t believe it
he hasn’t been hospitalized
except for the day he was born

he has worked out for decades
is or was a healthy specimen
doesn’t drink smoke
do drugs or eat red meat
an unlikely candidate
for a deadly cancer

no time for sleep in the hospital
nurses and phlebotomists
testing and checking
on him day and night
he hates being confined
and he’s got fish to feed at home

days later he gets discharged
sick of hospital food tons of tests
no peace and no real sleep

a year and loads of treatments
and arm punctured blood tests
finally he’s free of the cancer
improved and reborn better
personally and spiritually

the trials the treatments
a triumph and he lost his
fear of death forever

bob boyd