Poems by Bob Boyd

My girlfriend went on a ghost tour with a friend
I didn’t go. I didn’t believe in ghosts.

She went missing after the tour
I searched everywhere for her and

Even talked to the tour leader who said
She had been fine after the tour.

Seven anxious days later, my girlfriend
Returned and said her name was Angela

And no longer Mary. And everything about
Her had changed. Nothing was the same.

I learned a woman named Angela died
In one of the houses the tour visited.

My girlfriend disappeared again a day later
She went back to the alleged haunted house

Angela had died in, and Mary died of
Unknown causes in that house.

Creeps me out to this very day and
I often wonder if Mary had become

Possessed by Angela’s ghost or
inexplicably became mentally ill.

Bob Boyd

My wife told me her newfound guru was God in flesh
And could grant his followers enlightenment in a lifetime.
I told her that was nonsense. He is just a cult leader.
We argued about if for a stressful, ruinous week
Until she said she she was leaving me
And going to California to be with her guru.
I said fine, but you are making a big mistake.
She said she felt sorry for me, a lost soul,
Who wasn’t evolved enough to see the truth.
I let that go as she packed and stomped
Out of my life and our ten year marriage.

A year later I saw in the news that
All the guru’s followers killed themselves
By walking into what the guru called
The Agni fires of liberation to become
Illuminated demi gods in the heavens.
The guru, however, didn’t take the walk
He vanished with an untold amount
Of the followers’ generous donations.
To my grateful surprise, my wife
Escaped the cult before the suicides
And came back to me. Maybe my
Desperate prayers actually worked.

Bob Boyd

Sometimes in the nighttime hours
When everything is quiet
When the moon shows its face
And the stars light up the sky
I stare at it all in breathtaking awe
And my thoughts turn to beautiful you
I think of how wonderful you were
In the years of our star-crossed love
And I stifle as many tears as the stars
Remembering what happened to you
When that terminal cancer took
You into the darkest night
Beyond the stars
Beyond our love
Beyond this life

Bob Boyd

You were the first women to bring me flowers
The culture I came out would have labeled me a fem
For accepting flowers like a man turned weak and girly
Because I was light years beyond that unruly world
That nearly ended my young and troubled life
I was so pleased by your beautiful offering of love

Bob Boyd

we heard them on the radios
saw them on MTV videos
some were disparaged
as one hit wonders
but few can ever
achieve that one hit
others failed to live
fast and die young
a few still sing
their glory day hits
but now decades later
those once immortal
rock gods are dying
like the rest of us mortals
and I hate to see the end
of those great, epic days

Bob Boyd

You left me on a half moon night
Appropriate given your half truths
You said we’d be together forever
Forever in your world must have
Equaled a mere unlucky seven years
No wonder we didn’t get a fuller moon
And had to settle for the half slice
If I had been a full mooned werewolf then
I wouldn’t have hunt you down and killed you
Even in beastial state I couldn’t have done it
As if the moon became halved and
Took the hate and the fury out of me
And by the next half moon, so bright
I was irrevocably over you

Bob Boyd

Lying in bed sensing the end
Life ebbing out of me,
Body already like a corpse,
Breathing deep and shallow
Then Fast and slow.
I become less aware of me,
Conscious and unconscious.
Saliva building up in the back of my throat,
I feel the beginning of the rattling coming.
White light flashes in my mind
Angels coming? No way for unworthy me.
Angels fly far away, gone.
No eternal redemption for me?
Can’t barely hear my heart beating,
Becoming deathly faint.
Struggling for breath,
Drowning in death.
As if suddenly suicidal,
I succumb:
10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1
LIGHTS OUT.

Bob Boyd

I saw her in the grocery store in my perceptive, peripheral vision.
She was taking a long hungry look at me, which I liked.

When she looked away, I took more than a cursory look, sensed a possible thing.
Slightly past middle age, pretty in a blue dress, golden locks, a shade of gray.

Pushed my grocery store cart a respectful distance behind her, eyeballing her.
She began to morph into a Venus in front me, a goddess, a grocery store lights dream.

I spied a smiling Cupid lurking in the flower section drawing back his bow.
I thought maybe the gods of love have brought Venus to me, true love at last.

My Venus poked through the vegetables, tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, rutabagas.
It was all so grand until she got to the onions and put two bags full into her cart.

Cupid frowned, fluttered his wings, put away his bow, and flew out of the flowers and away.
The horrid taste of onions assaulted my taste buds and me and Venus were through.

Bob Boyd

She wanted the better life, and she had the looks
She moved to New York City where the action was
Her stunning looks landed her model jobs at just 18
She strutted down runways in London, Paris and Milan
But she jumped off a tall building to her death a year later
Tired of the drugs, the starving to stay skinny, the travel
And the men that used her and sucked the life out of her 18 years

Bob Boyd

Rabbit, Rabbit how adaptive you are
You live in the city yet you still survive
And you know where to find food
And you know where to hide
At least in this city, no one’s hunting you
Except maybe a rare hawk flying by
Or dogs and maybe cats, but I don’t know
When you see me, you scramble away
Not knowing I mean you no harm
And admire you for how you survive
But if I had the time, maybe I could tame you
And we could be friends

Bob Boyd