Poems by Bob Boyd

Sometimes he sees them in dreams,
wakes up thinking they’re with him alive,

the spirits of his deceased parents.

It’s a curious thing, and he wonders
if he’s really seeing their spirits in dreams

or just occasional illusions.

Bob Boyd

When he was married his wife
interfered with his decisions,

led him down one way streets
and dead ends,

became selfish, argumentive,
left him for men with more money.

When she was out of his life
and he was rid of her,

he and his decisions were
finally liberated,

and he found peace and
happiness without her.

Bob Boyd

He had a dream of a woman
he went out with decades ago.

In the dream she’s interested
in him again

although she left him
for another those decades ago

when he was a teenager
and had only dated her briefly.

In the dream common sense
is abandoned.

Instead of an old woman now,
she’s young again.

He wakes up lost in the illusion
for a moment.

Then he wonders why he had
such a foolish dream.

Bob Boyd

How can love,
euphoric at first,

gradually lose its
allure?

Why does that
elated feeling

eventually wear
off

when love gets
old?

Bob Boyd

His wife left this world
at age 50:

breast cancer.

He believes her
spirit lives on

because sometimes
she’s in his dreams.

She never speaks
to him

in those occasional
dreamworld visits,

but she always looks
serene and happy,

and he’s sure she’s
in heaven.

Bob Boyd

They’re nice at first,
charming, delightful,
disarming.

Chameleons with
dark sides hidden.

After you’re in their
control,

the monsters they
really are

mentally and
physically abuse
you.

If you’re smart,
you leave the first

time they hit
you.

Otherwise, if you
stay with them

the day may come
when they kill you.

Bob Boyd

To his neighbors
he was a kindly old man.

Always friendly, a good
person, a nice neighbor.

But when the police brought
him out of his house in handcuffs,

the neighbors were shocked to
learn he’d raped and murdered

a teenage girl when he was a
young man in an unsolved crime

that thanks to advancements in DNA,
he finally got apprehended for.

Bob Boyd

She’s young and beautiful.
feels she’ll be that way forever.
She’s caught in the illusion of eternal beauty,
trapped in a prison of self adoration,
until the years begin to cruelly erase her illusion,
and the men stop looking and calling,
and she’s no longer the prize they all
longed and sacrificed for.

Bob Boyd

We’re all hanging by tenuous threads in this
temporary existence

that we’re rarely aware of as other people
are dying every day.

Old age, accidents, sickness, murders, and
natural deaths.

Children, teenagers, young people, middle-aged,
and the old alike;

all hanging by those tenuous threads, and few
know when the threads will snap.

Bob Boyd

Presuming there’s an afterlife,
will we run into any annoying people there?

Will we have to suffer the insufferable of this mortal world
in the maybe immortal world?

Perhaps if you die and have to suffer annoying people,
you will have gone to hell.

Bob Boyd