Poems by Bob Boyd

The chicken is
merrily clucking away,
as if she were forever
as if she were dying never
not knowing she’s
a few clucks away
from her doomsday
her transition to somebody’s
dead chicken dinner.

Bob Boyd

The war drums are beating.
The soldiers are marching
the cadence of their boots
sounding on the ground.
The rulers are making speeches
to motivate the soldiers to fight,
the soldiers to die,
the wives and mothers to cry.

Bob Boyd

He was born into a family of Christians
with six generations of ministers.
He became a devout Christain as a kid,
dreamed of becoming a minister too.
Never missed a Sunday service,
taught Sunday School as a teenager.
He attended a Christian high school
and a prestigious Christian College,
became a minister at age 22.
He married a sweet Christian woman.
At first it was a heavenly union,
both devout followers of Christ.
But with the years, he became too
controlling of his obedient wife.
He kept her from friends and family
until she found love with another man,
an unintended extramarital affair.
He couldn’t allow her to embarrass him.
He became enraged and betrayed
his Christian faith and his ministry
by strangling his adulterous wife to death.

Bob Boyd

He aspired to be a gangster
started with petty theft
graduated to gang membership
extortion and grand theft
moved up in the ranks and
was promoted to a hitman
but when he was assigned his
first hit, he couldn’t do it
he didn’t have it in him
that fatal mistake ended him
he’s buried under a building
built a few months ago
in downtown Boston, Mass.

Bob Boyd

His dog always knew when he was
being taken to the veterinarian.

He’d whine and moan and always
tried to hide.

The man who owned the dog
was almost the same.

Although he didn’t try to hide
or whine and moan outwardly

he avoided going to a doctor
like his dog would have

if his dog had free will and
wasn’t forced to go.

Bob Boyd

My friend Benny was always lucky at playing poker;
he always won money at it.

Benny was lucky with women as well; he never seemed
to get rejected and always had girlfriends.

But though an otherwise nice guy, Benny cheated at poker,
and he cheated on women.

Benny sometimes played poker with dangerous men
and I thought one day he’d get caught cheating with them

and end up dead and buried somewhere, a missing person,
never found.

But Benny’s biggest mistake was cheating on a crazy woman
who sent him to his grave with a bullet in his head.

Bob Boyd

I never cared about climbing dangerous mountains.
or skydiving out of airplanes thousands of feet above ground.

In my view, life is risky enough without making it
even more risky.

To me, the only risk of my life worth taking has always
been risking it in defence of another.

But that’s just me and you might be different, savorng the thrills and finding inexpressible joy and excitement

in climbing dangerous mountains and jumping out of airplanes whereas I’ve always been too scared to do those things.

Bob Boyd

Time is like a lawnmower
the way it keeps mowing
down my days.

My life is like a large lawn
that is three fourths or more
mowed as of today, Saturday.

I can’t hear the hum of the mower
but I can feel the days being
mowed away.

Bob Boyd

I have old friends in the afterlife.
And I’m good with being dead like them.
I wholeheartedly welcome the Reaper
and look forward to joining those friends.

I have consumed more than enough
of the pleasures and the pains of this life.
I’ve had more than my allotted share.
So it’s easy for me to think this way,
and I can barely wait for my dying day.

Bob Boyd

I wake up this morning at 3 am.
I think to myself if I had a girlfriend
or a wife who slept with me,
that would probably be an annoyance
to them.
I see that as one of the many benefits
of living solo without a girlfriend or a wife.
Sure it can get lonely without a
significant other, but there are also benefits
that you don’t have when with another.
I feel blessed that I can see my situation
that way, and I greet another wonderful day.

Bob Boyd