Poems by Bob Boyd

It was like something out of a fairy tale
when the crane came knocking on the glass of her door.
Tap … tap … tap … and there he was, long beak and all.
It began one day when she was sitting at her picnic
table outside her home.
The crane suddenly appeared and just stood staring at her.
For reasons obscure, it had no fear of her, as if she
were another crane.
Then it came to see her everyday and eventually learned
how to tap on the glass of her door,
the beginning of a long term relationship that sadly ended
when the crane got hit by a car and died.

Bob Boyd

In a dream in a room filled with people,
I saw two men briefly get in a fight.
But the scene shifted so fast that I
didn’t get to see the outcome.
The scene shifted again, and one
of the men walked back into the room,
as though there had never been a fight,
and I could see he was a nice guy, as
was the other guy who fought him.
One guy was up for shaking hands
and forgetting about the tussel,
but the other was still angry.
So I stepped in and convinced him
to forget about the fight and took
his hand into the other guy’s hand,
and they both shook hands and
let the grievances go.
What that was about or meant
I do not know.

Bob Boyd

Day is night.
Night is day,
blending into
each other
almost as
though one.
Time speeds up.
you slow down.
Then you see
how it all went
by so fast, and
then you’re in
the ground
with day and
night still
blending into
each other
as though one.

Bob Boyd

Some people claim to have
had phone calls from the dead,

as if the dead can in rare cases
make phone calls from the afterlife,

as if the dead could use technology
to make contact with the living.

On September 20, 1988, the author,
David Koontz, supposedly received

a phone call from a woman he
thought was his mother.

She said, “Please be careful” 3 times.

2 days later, Koontz’s father, who had
dementia, tried to stab him to death.

Maybe there’s something to phone
calls from the dead.

Bob Boyd

Once in a while I get what I see as delusional,
the nagging need for another, another woman
in my vintaged life.

I expunge that need from my sometimes
lovelorn mind by weighing the pros and the cons,
and the cons always win.

Sometimes I wish I could do some psychic surgery
on the part of my brain that emits what I see as
harmful, romantic feelings.

But those occasional feelings are so deeply rooted
in my unruly old brain that I don’t think that even
a lobotomy could weed them out.

Bob Boyd

I often see them in crime shows getting arrested
for drunk driving.
I often see them in the news, teachers sexaully
abusing students.
I often see their links on YouTube to OnlyFans
exhibiting their bodies for money.
I often read about them on Sugar Daddy sites
selling their bodies for money.
I often see them on Youtube and TickTock videos
unhinged, acting insanely, over politics.
I often saw them on YouTube and TikTok videos
ecstatic that Chirley Kirk got murdered.
Some of them are alcholics, some are pedophles,
some are like prostitutes,some are just plain evil,
many, perhaps most, you cannot trust.
Women are not what they used to be, except
for some who still are what they used to be.

Bob Boyd

She claimed she loved him,
but she really loved herself.

When she got bored with him,
he saw she was really uncaring,
indifferent to his problems.

He saw then the real her,
superficial and about herself,
never really about him.

Not unlike those Dear John
women who write off men
they say they love when
the men are away in the military.

He saw the inevitable coming,
her departure from him,
and he was so relieved
when she was finally gone.

Often men are better off
when alone.

Bob Boyd

She said she’d love me forever,
even added and ever behind the forever.
But her yearly calendar or her sense of forever
was tragically inexact, not everlasting.
The lasting minus the ever of her pledged love
survived less than eight seasons for unknown reasons
when she dated another and mathematically
broke her pledge and subtracted
all of the forever out of our momentary love.

Bob Boyd

If only octopi could fly
imagine seeing them in the sky.
And why does the plural of octopus
sound like a freshly baked pie?
But, of course, seeing octopi in the sky
wouldn’t fly.
People would freak out.
And Henny Penny would probably think
that terrifying sight was worse than the sky falling.
Or that it was something out of a Lovecraftian
cosmic horror tale come to life.
So, in retrospect, I guess it’s best that octopi
cannot fly in the sky.

Bob Boyd

It rains fish in Honduras up to four times yearly.
Strong winds, waterspouts, the prayers of a
Spanish priest? Nobody knows for sure.

In 1982 it was raining men in the USA,
according to a song by the Weather Girls.
Maybe we need a song about raining fish
in Honduras entitled Lluvia de peces.

Bob Boyd