Poems by Bob Boyd

He never won true love’s lottery
always picked the wrong women
or more correctly they picked him
years of broken hearts
and broken promises
disappointments and failures
yet fool for love that he was
he kept playing love’s lottery
never getting a winning ticket
of real and lasting love
at 86 still held out hope
couldn’t let go of the dream
of winning the mega lottery prize
died alone and unloved

Bob Boyd

She was just seventeen and bursting with promise,
an all A’s student got a scholarship at Radcliff.

Gave up the scholarship and the prestigious college
to marry her farmer boyfriend and become what some of today’s young women disparagingly call a trad wife.

Some understandably thought she was a fool
to throw away a free ride to Radcliff.
Some said young love never lasts.

Somehow she knew in her young heart
everything she needed, everything she could ever
want, was in being with him.

He felt the same, and they both knew that
that theirs was a true and lasting love.
Sometimes when you know you know.
Sometimes you are right.

Some never really find true love or are
unwilling to hold onto it, pass it by,
or really commit to it when they have
a chance at it. Some make wrong choices
in love all their lives.

Some choose a career, prestige, and more money
over a total commitment above all things
and distractions to true love in this passing life.

She helped her husband tend the animals and raise
the crops on his farm, had two kids, a boy and a girl.

Never regretted giving up her scholarship to Radcliff.
Led a long and happy life with sufficient money
and material things. And more importantly true love.

Bob Boyd

if I could write a hundred books about you,
none of those books could ever explain
all the wonders I see in you.

If I could count all the stars in the sky,
the total would not compare to all
the love I have for you.

And I know if I could be with a thousand women
none of them could compare to you.

Bob Boyd

I remember how bright the stars were
and how a comet streamed across the sky
right as we met under a summer’s night
at that folk music festival in Alban, Vermont
when the world seemed full of endless joy
and tears were uncried and nobody died.

I remember how dark the night was,
how none of the stars came out to shine,
how no comets streamed in the sky,
on that tragic moonless, empty night
when that chronic depression became too much
and you walked into Lake Champlain and died.

Bob Boyd

Mandy broke up with him before he went into the Army.
She said she was going to college and needed her space.
Though he never tried to talk Mandy out of leaving him,
in his heart he never broke up with her.

After he returned home from the Army four year later,
he learned that Mandy was back in town too.
A shady guy named Randall said she’d become a whore,
and he could see her downtown hooking on Park Ave.

He slammed Randal against a wall for his blatant lie
but heard from some of his old buddies that Randall was right.
He drove down to Park Ave and saw Mandy there on a corner looking like she was drugged out and not like herself.

A seedy guy in an old pickup truck stopped in front of her and Mandy got in the car and rode down an alley with him.
He followed and saw Mandy having sex with him in his truck.

Sickened, he almost threw up when he saw the god awful truth with disgust and sadness in his heart, he drove home.
He couldn’t sleep that night wondering what happened to his once innocent and sweet high school sweetheart.
He decided to go looking for her the next day
to try to rescue her from what she had done to herself.

He drove up and down Park Ave, but never found Mandy until he saw in the 6 pm news, that she had died of a drug overdose on Park Ave the night before.
Tears welled up in his eyes. He regretted not trying to
rescue Mandy the day before when he saw her on Park Ave.

He left town after that and reenlisted back in the Army
and volunteered to fight in the deserts of Afghanistan.
Distraught and endlessly thinking about Mandy,
he stood up and walked into enemy fire in a battle there,
committing suicide with the hope of joining her in death.

Bob Boyd

In June of 92 in upstate New York
on a verdant pasture framed with trees, a cow,
I’ll call Betsy, for lack of her real name, if any,
wandered toward me from behind a wired
fence and hung her head over it, looking at me
as if to say Hello.

Surprised, delighted, amazed I said something
I’ve forgotten to Betsy – not understanding human
speak, she didn’t respond linguistically.

But Betsy stared into my eyes as if
communicating telepathically but not quite.

However, the contact felt good, a contact high,
and I liked just staring at the cow and the cow
staring back at me, as if we had an Indescribable,
undefinable human to cow sympatico, as if we had
an interspecies unspoken communication.

Reluctantly, I had to leave Betsy, I was with friends
on our way to other places, but when I said goodbye
to her, I swear by the cow gods above, she
intoned a long mooooooo, as if a long goodbye,
as if we really had an Indescribable, undefinable
human to cow sympatico.

Bob Boyd

Didn’t have much luck
With females in his shy teens
Until he became a rockstar
And females flocked to him
Delicious treats in a candy store

Tasted as many as he could
One night stand tasty treats
Candies in cities and towns
All over America

Drugs and highs followed
Crazy and out of control life
Too much candy.
Too many drugs.
Became addicted to both
One gave him VD
The other death by OD

Bob Boyd

She said she didn’t know of anybody
who didn’t have that fleeting thought
of wishing their spouse was dead.

I had to disagree. Never ever would I
wish any girlfriend or wife was dead
no matter how bad the relationship
turned out to be.

Not even the ex girlfriend who stole from me
and was writing love letters to another man.

I think you have to have some evil in you
to think it’s natural to wish a loved one dead,
even fleetingly.

In the unlikely case I ever get involved with
another woman maybe I should ask her
if she ever had a fleeting feeling to wish
an ex was dead to see if that evil is in her
and to save myself from it in case
that evil materialized to my detriment.

Bob Boyd

Wealthy banker
High six figures salary
Married over 20 years
Pretty socialite wife
2 kids in their teens

Hires new assistant
Bombshell blonde
Former Stripper
Shady past
Has affair with her
Wife files for divorce

To avoid messy divorce
Exec hires 2 hitmen
With assistant’s help
To off wife
Daughters if necessary

By luck one hitman nabbed
Implicates other hitman
Exec and assistant too
Exec flees before arrested

Wife helps cops find him
Hitmen and assistant convicted
Exec convicted too
3 piece suits to prison stripes

Bob Boyd

He sees the female backup singer in the 1979 song Makin’ It in a YouTube video.

He finds himself liking her long, blondish hair, almost down to her waist, her trim, petite figure, her green blouse, and her form fitting black slacks.

He likes the way she dances, her legs moving from side to side, the way she sings, and the sweetly pleasing sound of her lovely voice.

He realizes he has developed a crush on her and is foolishly imagining that love would have been perfect being with her.

He is in denial about the fact she is 47 years older now than in the video and might not still be alive and no longer looks the way she did back then.

When that reality dawns on him, he gets more irrational and chooses to think that maybe his obsession is a sign that when he dies he might be with her,

which might explain why he is so foolishly attracted to her and what is no longer her, but he fails to realize he cannot see the most important part of her; i.e. her brain,

meaning even if his attraction had ever materialized he might not have been compatible with her or she might have been too difficult to get along with or all about the money.

When the video ends, he gets a reprieve and returns to normalcy – until the next time he watches that video and becomes unrealistically captivated with her all over again.

Bob Boyd