free verse poems some fiction, some nonfiction
His dog began barking at something outside
his cottage in the country.
He opened his front door, his shotgun in hand,
his dog barking beside him.
Blinding, blazing light flowed into his eyes.
The glare made it impossible for him to see.
His dog growled and charged toward the light.
When the light went out and his vision cleared,
his dog was gone and has been never been found.
Bob Boyd
She loved her simple life in the country,
She knew about herbs and berries and such.
But mostly she loved the safety and serenity.
I loved her, tried to live in the country with her,
but I found the country life too boring
compared to the city life I was accustomed to.
And she wouldn’t return to the city with me.
So I went back alone, but often when I’m feeling
lonely in the city, I think about her and wish
I could have stayed in the country with her.
But, alas, some things just aren’t meant to be.
Bob Boyd
Some claim people have time traveled.
I’m unconvinced.
Maybe someday people will time travel
with a marvelous machine, maybe AI made.
But, for now, I’m not believing it.
And anyone who says he’s time traveled,
I think he’s just seeking attention,
maybe to gain notability and money —
or just for a spoof and a laugh.
Bob Boyd
I have come to think personalities are predestined
and often, though not always, impossible to change.
For example, there is no way to reform
a serial killer’s personality.
Other personalities with either an act of God, a
traumatic event, or incredible determination can change.
But I believe the roots of personalities usually run
incredibly deep and difficult to transform.
Bob Boyd
On my YouTube channel, her YouTube
videos keep popping up.
She’s a young Russian woman, living
there in the country.
She’s more than pretty enough, and she
has a lovely figure.
Everytime I see her channel, I wonder what
it would be like
if when I died I was destined to be reborn in
Russia and fated to eventually
be living peacefully in the country away
from the cities, the smog and the crime
and in love with a more then pretty enough
woman like her.
Bob Boyd
He was screwed by his genetics,
had genes predisposing him to be
a lost cause, malevolent serial killer
born to torture and kill.
And he could no more be rehabilitated
then a chicken could be turned into a cow.
He killed and tortured many women without
any empathy.
He enjoyed seeing them pleading, crying,
screaming, and dying.
If there’s a personal and loving God, my
question to this God would be why do you
allow such a monster to roam this world
torturing and killing so many innocents?
But maybe you’re an impersonal God only,
and all the events on earth are random
without any Divine intercessions or heavenly
protections.
Bob Boyd
Based on many near death experiences,
I’ve read and heard about,
I believe there’s a spirit world.
What I wonder about is if we need any
sustance there,
and the need for romantic love.
Since we wouldn’t have any internal
organs there,
I don’t think we need food.
And since I don’t think anybody procreates
there,
I don’t believe there’s any romantic love.
But, don’t get my wrong, I’d like there to
be romantic love in the spirit world
minus all the complications of it in this world.
Bob Boyd
Some people criticized Tesla for obsessing over pigeons.
I don’t have a problem with that.
While living in New York, he spent many hours
feeding pigeons in a park.
If I’d lived in New York, I would have liked to have
fed them too.
Sometimes he took injured pigeons home to help them
heal and get well.
I find that praiseworthy and admire Tesla for caring
enough for pigeons to do that.
Supposedly, he said he fell in love with a white pigeon,
like a man falls in love with a woman.
And when she died, a bright white light shone from her
eyes brighter than any light he had generate with machinery.
Tesla was depressed and distraught when she died,
told friends he felt like his life’s work was finished.
I don’t have a problem with any of that, maybe he had a mystical
connection with that pigeon beyond human comprehension.
Even if what I wrote is just bunk, at least his obsession wasn’t
hurting anybody, nor himself and his fame.
Bob Boyd
Clouds wandered in azure skies
Rivers poured through towns and glens
Flowers swayed in windswept fields
Deer and elk frockled in fall forests
But in a time forgotten cemetery
Hidden among quiet oak trees
Defaced and abandoned
Not a soul stirred
Bob Boyd
After you left me
despite all I did for you and
your son
helping pay for his treatments
for his hydrocephalus
and tragically for his funeral
and bringing you to America
for a chance at a better life
than the poverty you grew
up in
and much more –
I hated you for two years,
even though I was glad you
were gone
Then one day
like the sun shining
through the dark clouds
of a ceasing storm
my hatred ceased for you
and I got on with my life freed
from the consuming turmoil
of the hate
that was buried in my heart
The artist Matisse had a young and beautiful assistant,
Lydia Delectorskaya.
She was hired to help him when his wife got sick to
run his art studio and be a nurse to his wife.
Lydia respected and admired Matisse because unlike other
artists, he never tried to seduce her after she became his model.
But Matisse’s wife Amelie grew jealous of Lydia, not because
she thought she was sleeping with Matisse.
She was jealous of how Lydia was doing all the things she
used to do for Matisse running his art studio.
She told Matisse it was her or Lydia, and Matisse told Lydia
she had to leave.
Distraught and feeling like she had lost her purpose in life,
Lydia tried to commit suicide by shooting herself in the chest.
Miraculously, she lived. The bullet hit a bone in her chest,
which saved her from dying.
Not long after that, Amelie left Matisse, and he asked Lydia
to come back and work for him again.
Though Matisse and Lydia never became lovers, she worked
for him till the day he died, running everything for him.
After he died, she wrote two favorable books about her
experiences with him and his work:
Against the Winds and Storms (1996) Apparent Ease (1998),
and she spent the rest of her life working on his heritage.
Bob Boyd
She plays with a Ouija Board one day,
thinking it’s just a harmless game.
That night she wakes up and sees a hag spirit
next to her bed looking at her ominously.
The nightmarish scene repeats night after night,
and eventually she gets drained and sick.
The hag spirit, really a demon, keeps draining
her life force till she feels like she is dying.
A woman with knowledge of dark things and
how to exorcize them is called in.
She uses sage and sea salt and mysterious chants
and prayers in the bedroom and around the girl.
A lightness is felt in the dark room, and the woman
knows she’s rid it and the girl of the hag demon.
Thereafter the girl regains her good health and
is never tormented by the hag demon again.
Bob Boyd
The separation is painful; her soldier husband is
somewhere on the front lines.
Every day is a lament, and she hasn’t heard from
him in weeks.
She sees flocks of birds returning now that it’s spring,
but still no correspondence from her husband.
In a dream she sees him bloodied and unconscious,
and when an officer knocks on her front door the next day,
before she opens the door, tears fall down her face, and
she knows her husband has died.
Bob Boyd
I’ve become excited about art and
the bios of male and female artists.
I never cared about art before,
but now I’m in love with it.
And even though I’m an old man,
I was thinking how fun and
educational it would be to have
an artist, hobbyist or professional,
as a girlfriend or a wife. And how
I’d love to see her paintings and
talk about art all the time with her.
Bob Boyd
The artist Henri Matisse had a nice, supportive wife.
She married him when he was near penniless.
She didn’t care about the money. She cared about
his awesome artistic ability and felt he should pursue it.
She stayed with him through lean times and even
opened up a hat shop to help with finances.
But many years later she left him; it’s rumored because
he was involved with another woman.
If that was the case, what a shame that he lost such
a good and supportive wife because of it.
Bob Boyd
When he first saw here, he was so blown away
by her looks that he told her he felt love at first sight for her.
She said, “But you don’t know me.”
And mercy me, she was so right. Six of her last boyfriends and husbands disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances.
He didn’t know this, so he went out with her anyway, and a year
later, he hadn’t disappeared or died.
But she had died. Supposedly she jumped out of a ten story window
while on her honeymoon with him.
Maybe it was a case of serial killers in love, a match made in hell,
and they both had the same plan, except his worked out well.
Bob Boyd
Billions of people on the planet.
If they have spirits when they die,
I wonder where in the afterlife
there will there be room enough
for billions of them and the trillions
of them already there.
Do you ever think about stuff like
that or don’t you care?
To speculate further, maybe there
is a set number, and that number
just gets repurposed as newbies
recycled back to this planet.
And if those spirits get good
enough and behave well enough,
maybe they get off the repurposed
cycle and kind of evaporate into
infinity. And as a reward, they
stay permanently blissed out.
Bob Boyd
Cornflower blue eyes
Golden blonde hair
Enchanting voice
Elegant and angelic
Beautiful teenage dream
Goddess at teenage dance
Accepted his offer to dance
Sweet sixteen playing
He fell in love
She did too
A long distance
Teenage romance
Her in Jersey
Him in Massachusetts
You Belong to me
Their song
September came
Heart aches when apart
Heaven when together
Summer love
Marriage one day
High school prom in Jersey
Something off
Teenage romance fading
Writing on the wall
Heart break coming
Cheated on him
Teenage love
Marriage plans
Both dead
Gone forever
A thousand tears
Bob Boyd
Through fires, smoke, and the stench of bombs, the moon was war-torn and blue.
Alone, dazed, shell-shocked, grieving, my heart was too.
My life destroyed, my mind numbed, my hopes shattered.
They bombed the hell out of my beautiful city and killed my Anastasia,
who bled to death in my arms in seconds, while I was helpless to help her.
My sweet angel, my love, who had accepted my proposal of marriage
before the bombs fell and turned our city and our love into rubble.
My world a nightmare without her, a godforsaken, war-torn hell.
Crazed with rage, I marched into battle to avenge my sweet angel Anastasia.
With nothing left and my life over, like an insane Viking berserker, I’d lost my fears and become like a crazed beast.
The enemy troops fear dying, but I don’t; a noble death will reunite me with Anastasia.
Dying is all I have left. I’m empty inside, marching through
this dystopian nightmare of corpses and dead dreams.
The cadence of a thousand determined boots marching summons
me to war under a blue moon that’s as broken as I am.
Bombs explode around me, soldiers and civilians screaming and dying.
I fight the battle raging and fearless, indifferent to the horrors,
like a bulletproof immortal protected by the gods of war.
The battle ends; we win; still alive, I collapse on the battleground,
the stench of gunpowder permeating the smoky air,
blood running in rivulets in the streets.
And I cry countless tears for my sweet angel, my love, my wife… Anastasia.
Bob Boyd
Numberless Planets in the Universe
Since there are numberless planets in the universe,
far more than billions and trillions,
logically, there has to be life on some of those planets.
And I’m not just thinking about bipedal alien life.
I’m wondering if they have any birds, and if they did,
I’m wondering what those exotic birds would look like.
I’m hoping they don’t have anything like spiders,
alligators, crocodiles, poisonous insects and snakes.
And while I’m on the hoping they haven’t got, include
anything like jerks, mean people, human like predators
and psychopaths. Somebody like you would probably
be okay. I sense that, lol.
Bob Boyd