Poems by Bob Boyd

In the past I’ve researched music as far back as
I could find it on the Internet.

And I’ve always held that a good song is a good song
no matter if it is current or hundreds of years old.

In those explorations I became enamored with 30s music, mostly because of the lyrics, often romantic.

Some of those songs I researched the history on, like the dance hall girl song, 10 Cents A Dance.

And, unknown to me, I learned many women earned their living dancing for money with men in dance halls in the 20s and 30s.

And they called these women taxi-dancers who worked in Taxi Dance Halls where men bought tickets to

twirl around dance halls with these charming and adept at dancing young women.

I also learned some objected to these dance halls and considered dancing for money akin to a lesser form of prostitution

and tried to offer the taxi-dancers what they felt were more respectable jobs.

But the problem was these jobs were mostly unappealing and paid far less money.

Here are the lyrics to Ten Cents A Dance with the song linked in the title:

Ten Cents a Dance
Ruth Etting

I work at the Palace Ballroom, but,
gee that Palace is cheap;
When I get back to my chilly hall room
I’m much too tired to sleep.
I’m one of those lady teachers,
a beautiful hostess, you know,
the kind the Palace features
for only a dime a throw.

Ten cents a dance
that’s what they pay me,
gosh, how they weigh me down!
Ten cents a dance
pansies and rough guys,
tough guys who tear my gown!
Seven to midnight I hear drums.
Loudly the saxophone blows.
Trumpets are tearing my eardrums.
Customers crush my toes.
Sometime I think
I’ve found my hero,
but it’s a queer romance.
All that you need is a ticket,
Come on, big boy, ten cents a dance.

Fighters and sailors and bowlegged tailors
can pay for their ticket and rent me!
Butchers and barbers and rats from the harbors
are sweethearts my good luck has sent me.
Though I’ve a chorus of elderly beaux,
stockings are porous with holes at the toes.
I’m here till closing time,
Dance and be merry, it’s only a dime.

Sometime I think
I’ve found my hero,
But it’s a queer romance.
All that you need is a ticket.
Come on, big boy, ten cents a dance.

Written by: Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart
Album: Presenting Ruth Etting
Released: 1926
Lyrics provided by Musixmatch

Many have been trying been to unravel
the Bigfoot mystery for many years,
seemingly with no solid proofs
of this mysterious creatures
existence.

As an armchair speculator,
I’ve come to the conclusion
that Bigfoot is interdimensional
since he’s uncannily elusive and
vanishes when scared hunters
take frightened shots at him.

And that could explain why there
are no corpses or scat left behind
in the 75,000 alleged sightings of him.

Imagine if Bigfoot were interdimensional
and more evolved than us.

Imagine if Bigfoot lived in a
Shangri La-like dimension
and when not playing hide seek
with astonished humans to prank
them and enjoy a few chuckles
between his vanishing acts and
his forays into our material world
and whatever else preoccupies
his transcendent existence.

Imagine if Bigfoot were a perennial
free spirit living his best life
leapfrogging from one dimension
to another, carefree and liberated
from the constraints and worries
of lesser, restricted human lives.

Bob Boyd

While having an otherwise peaceful sleep
a night hag froze and frightened him.

Trapped, unable to move, he tried to
panic himself into the waking state.

He failed as the night hag became
more menacing and drew closer
to him.

To make things worse, the night hag
looked exactly like his dead ex-wife.

Then an idea popped into his mind
and he mentally made
the sign of the cross.

And poof, the night hag aka his ex
dissolved back into the darkness
and he woke up and

gave his wife’s bullet-ridden corpse
a proper burial from the freezer
in his ceiler to a secret plot
hidden behind some flowers
in their backyard.

Bob Boyd

I hear the werewolf howling at my door
I yell back at her, “I can’t do this anymore.”
I’m not terrified as I should be because
Even though she’s a werewolf tonight,
Even though she’s a horrifying beast,
She still loves and respects me
And won’t break in and kill me.
I thought my total love for her
Was more than strong enough
To face the worst of challenges.
But after she got bit by a werewolf
And became a moon-triggered monster
And killed seven people and a little girl
I could no longer be yoked to her.
She asked me to become like her
To ensure we’d always be together.
But though I still loved her despite
The monster she had become,
I had to get away from her
And her killing sprees.
But she’s not giving up
On me or our love,
And she visits me
Every full moon night.

Bob Boyd

The singer in the song I’m listening to
is singing about how he “can’t fight
this feeling anymore” because he,
for whatever reasons, is fighting
against falling in love.

I conjecture that maybe he’s been
hurt one time too many or fears
losing what he sees as a loss
of his freedom.

Whatever the case that song,
Can’t Fight This Feeling by
REO Speedway is one of
my all time favorites

Then he sings that the woman
he is becoming increasingly enamored
with is like a candle in the window
in what seems like his toughest times.

And I realize I’ve forgotten about
fighting those feelings, as if they’re
dead, waked, and buried in a
graveyard of forgotten memories
in the depths of this old man’s head.

But I let those feelings pass by
in the rivers of thoughts and
speculations that flow
profusely through my ever
thinking and imaginative mind.

And I finish this poem listening to
another guy singing about
how he “just doesn’t want
to be lonely.”

Bob Boyd

From a Beautiful Actress to an Unrecognizable Homeless Woman

I read in the news about this woman who had
been a beautiful actress in a popular tv show,

but now roams the streets homeless, disheveled
and pushing a shopping cart full of items
she finds in dumpsters.

And I wonder what caused her to fall so hard.
I think in the news the fall was due to drugs,

but I have to wonder if a mental health issue
led to her awful demise along with the drugs.

It concerns me that there seems to be
no help for her. No one to intervene and
save her from the streets

and the horrible things that could happen
to her in such a vulnerable state,
and it saddens me to see she has
such a tragic, horrible fate
and seems totally abandoned.

I guess it comes down to free will
even if your will is compromised
and you’re putting yourself in jeopardy.

I find that heartbreakingly sad
and I wish I could wave a magic wand
and save her and probably thousands
upon thousands of others from
being seemingly abandoned in the streets.

Bob Boyd

I was like the Prince of Darkness in a preacher’s robe,
A traveling preacher in the northeast of America.
I did the Lord’s work seven days a week,
Turning lost souls into believers,
Saved them all for the glory of God.
I did the Devil’s work at other times,
stabbing many unwary women to death.

I brought hundreds of people to God,
Ended fifty women’s lives for the Devil.
I had no problem with the contradictory life.
My conscience didn’t care about the infamy.
I was a clever fiend, never got caught,
And I savored all those sweet kills,
Starting with neighbors’ pets as a child.

I died of a massive heart attack in 1873,
Which was ironic, heartless as I was.

When I knocked on heaven’s door
I thought God would forgive my murderous sins
Because of all those lost souls I saved for him.
And after all, I reasoned, he had made
Me into the half holy half unholy thing,
Preacher monster killer that I was.

But nobody answered heaven’s door
Even though disembodied I’d changed.
I lost my compulsion to sinfully kill.
The preacher in me took completely over.
And even though I worked for Satan some,
I didn’t want to go to his world of torments.

So in my ghostly form I roam the world
From church to church praying and confessing
With the hope of enough sincere atonement
Heaven’s door will eventually open to me.

Bob Boyd

Jackson Brown’s Song, “Somebody’s Baby” and You

“Well, just look at that girl with the light coming up in her eyes.”
(From the song Somebody’s Baby, sung by Jackson Brown, 1982)

If you are a woman reading this poem here and now,
whether you are seventeen or seventy-seven, or older,
this heartfelt poem is dedicated to you along with
the song lyric about the lights coming up in her eyes.
I believe no matter your age or your trials or your situations those wondrous womanly lights are still coming up in you.

And if you’re seventy-seven, gray-haired, or older,
and those lights are no longer shining as bright as they were in your younger seasons and yesteryears —

I’ve no doubt those lights are still in you and will brighten again with your ultimate liberation into the sunlit afterlife where you will be born anew, resplendently blooming, like sunflowers reborn gloriously in the springtime sunshine

And if you are seventeen, oh how those lights shine in your eyes.
Oh how they are so amazingly fresh and radiantly bright.
I hope no matter what you face in this uncertain, complicated life those lights never go out and keep coming up in you.

Bob Boyd

Christos.
The omnipresent.
The omniscient.
The omnipotent.
The unfathomable.
At the core of everything, the planets, the cosmos
The fields, the flowers, the streams,
The rivers, the seas, the skies, the clouds
In all things, in all creatures
In this life, in the next
In death, you will see Christos
White Light brighter
Than the blazing sun
Unconditional Love beyond
Any love you ever experienced
Any love you could ever imagine
The earthbound life you leave
Will dissolve blissfully
In the everlasting brilliance
Of His infinite love
For you and for all creation
In your real home
The eternally blissful
Presence of Christos.
The omnipresent.
The omniscient.
The omnipotent.
The unfathomable.

Bob Boyd

If I could have a
face to face
with God, these
are some of the
questions I’d ask
Him:

Why are some
born into the world
fated with
tormented lives
of mental illness?

Why are some
children barely
out of the womb
stricken with
cancer?

Why do we have
to have
psychopaths and
sociopaths in
this world?

Why wars
murders galore
rapists and
pedophiles
and evil
everywhere?

And why did a
beautiful wife
and mother in
Kentucky her arms
and legs cut off from
a kidney infection
have to suffer such
a horrible fate?

And how could
this inspirational
woman say, “If one
person can see
God from all of this,
that made it all
worth it”?

Then I’d say
forget about the
questions
pray make me
as saintly as she.

Bob Boyd