Poems by Bob Boyd

You can kill the body
but you cannot kill the soul

when a person is murdered
I like to think that person
particularly a woman
murdered by a serial killer
or a deranged evil lover

goes to a place in the afterlife
where the way she went out
isn’t even a memory
doesn’t have any trauma
or lasting emotional scars

a place where none of
the evil things that happen
all over the world
are obliterated forever
in the peace love
and bliss of the afterlife.

Bob Boyd

She’s in the ER, 1 am
her husband has had
a heart attack

he fainted in the ER
and hurriedly they
wheeled him away

he’s on the exam
table clinically dead

she acts like she’s
worried about him

secretly she hopes
that son of a bitch
is permanently dead.

Bob Boyd

Her name was Teresa
and she wasn’t what
she seemed to be
he told her she was
not of this world
and he was more
right than he
had imagined

the first time he
kissed her
she abducted him
and took him
to her ufo
restrained and
probed him

then kissed him
goodbye and
dropped him
from the sky.

Bob Boyd

In a YouTube video, I Saw an Alpine Ibex Goat
climb a near vertical dam wall in the alps.

As I watched him climb that wall, it was like
standing on a building hundreds of feet

above the ground looking down with fear
in my trembling heart,

afraid that at any moment the Ibex would
fall off the wall over a hundred feet to

the ground and be crushed to death
from the impact on the rocks below.

Yet, like a human impossibly walking on water,
the ibex miraculously scaled the wall.

And it did it with what looked like a supernatural,
fearless, death-defying skill.

Hail Alpine Ibex, king of perilous heights!

Bob Boyd

Hey, American Dipper Bird,
how is it that they say you
can fly underwater?

How is it your eyelids
are white?

Do they provide you with
protection and underwater
vision when you close
your eye lids underwater?

And why are you such an
anomaly that you are called
an aquatic song bird, unlike
the other song birds who
cannot swim underwater?

And how is if you can stand
in freezing water and dip
your beak into it to forage
for food?

Also, one last thing. I’ve
read your color is a
“drab gray.”

I feel that’s an unkind
and thoughtless
description of your color.

I see your plumage as
a magnificent
light gray color
and I hope you
have a great day.

Bob Boyd

I believe it’s plausible
that like rivers
flowing to the ocean
all beings
aninamate
and inanimate
are flowing to
the ocean of bliss
aka
eternal bliss consciousness.

Bob Boyd

Sure it’s nice to have someone,
but, alas, in this world it won’t last.
If you don’t break up, death will
eventually break you up.
One way or the other heartaches
will ensue.
In some ways it’s better to have
no one.
In some ways it’s better to be free.

Bob Boyd

In my youth
I lived a more
turbulent life

often hectic
often crazy

now I have
a more
predictable life

never hectic
never crazy

it’s a solitary life
it’s a quiet life

and the peace
is superior

to the noisy life
of my youth.

Bob Boyd

Did this universe really have a beginning,
and will it have an ending?

Or does it have many beginnings
and many endings?

Will Shiva ever dance again,
the creation and the dissolution?

Or is the universe a never knowable
forever without a beginning or an ending?

Bob Boyd

I was sound asleep until in a dream
I saw a spider hanging from a spider
thread in front of my face.

It looked so real that I thought it
wasn’t a dream and woke up
ready to bat it away from my face.

And I wondered why me, why did
that goddamn spider have to hassle
me in that dream?

I looked up meanings of spiders in
dreams, but didn’t find any that
applied to me.

Maybe the meaning was it was
just a goddamn spider that
visited me in a lousy dream.

Bob Boyd