Free verse poetry, mostly fiction, some nonfiction
Friends and generational icons
Dying everyday, expecting more this May
Death is having one hell of a payday
Towns, cities, states, countries and continents
Death’s unregulated slaughter everywhere
Sobbing loved ones across the aging globe
Their end times coming soon too
Eighty years nothing to patient Death
A millisecond in Death’s eternity
He’s been waiting for you from
The second you’re born.
Bob Boyd
Going way back to the twenties on YouTube
Seeing people dancing back then, young and merry,
All dead, their dancing done, all in the ground,
A sobering reminder of life’s transience.
Not always easy to really get the grim fate
Awaiting you and me when our dancing is done.
Living like we’re here forever, even though we know better.
Sad how many leave the dance younger than age thirty three.
Often wonder why many so young have to die, never living full lives;
Sometimes I say things like maybe they were needed in heaven sooner,
Or perhaps God needed more angels in heaven.
But those words are insufficient to answer the ultimate: Why?
And the seeming injustice of it all. God’s call.
Bob Boyd
Like the song Key Largo said, we had it all
Until you got involved with that crazy cult
Abandoned me and our true love
For a fake Avatar in Goa, India
Who promised full enlightenment
In a single lifetime by obeying him
Sad you fell for his impossible con
Heart broken and screwed up
I vowed never another woman
Became like a bona fide monk
Three years later, you came home
A disheveled, babbling crazy women
Used and abused by the bogus holy man
You got delivered by an Exorcist
Died a year later in Harvard Square
Drug overdose, no coming back
I placed flowers and tears on your grave
Bob Boyd.
The clock is ticking. Your life is running out.
Is that important or a thought avoided by you,
Your inescapable, destined demise?
Or most of the time do you fool yourself
Unconsciously feeling like you’ll live forever
Even though sometimes you wake up
And your mortality briefly makes you uneasy
Quickly suppressed, hidden in your mind
Too dreadful a reality to dwell upon.
Till a life threatening medical condition
Invades your body and your anxious mind
And your mortality becomes front and center.
But that possible clock stop can be liberating,
A time for great personal and spiritual growth.
Bob Boyd
the winter is gone
the new season’s warmer weather
leaves me mournful and cold
tears like April showers
rain from my eyes
my girlfriend lies dead
in the Spring ground
Bob Boyd
Spoke to one of the post clinically dead
yesterday.
She can’t wait to go back to the Light
and the Love.
I yearn to go there too and experience
the wonders of the Light and the Love
beyond this often unfair, sometimes
dangerous, coin toss life.
Too many things in this impermanent
world I no longer like.
Let me fly to the higher one in a
heavenbound kite.
And bask in the Light of eternal
peace.
To live forever in the unimaginable,
the no one wants to leave it, the
unconditional Love.
Bob Boyd
Ever think of how uncertain your life is?
Consider how in a millisecond it could end
The death strike of a deadly medical condition that kills you slowly, cruelly
A drug infested, cell phone talking driver mows you down crossing a street
A roaring tornado rips up your home and kills you in a deadly whirl
A fanatical death wish tyrant drops a nuke on your country and ends you
A giant asteroid obliterates your city, you, and possibly the human race
The earth unexpectedly, implausibly, spins out of orbit canceling everything
Maybe the hedonists have the right idea, live for today
Party away your fears in mindless nights, don’t think about tomorrows
Or the uncertainty of this fragile existence and your tenuous, temporary life.
Bob Boyd
No need for fear when Death arrives
To take us to the eternity of Love and Light
Relocation to a higher, brighter world
Freed from the uncertainties of this impermanence
Passing illusion, clung to as if our lives go on here forever
Except for occasional reminders of our mortality
Death of loved ones, killer diseases, and more
World on edge with ever-present threats of nuclear holocaust
Murders, wars, atrocities, and injustice across the planet
Tenuous existence, we are like flickering candle flames
Soon to burn out as numberless ones before us
But mercifully saved by Death,
Usher To the eternity of Love and Light.
Bob Boyd
My old soul is weary
I’ve been alive too long
Friends of old all dead
Lives buried in insignificance
Stories lost in inexorable time
My old soul is weary
Years have become a fading blur
My demise approaching fast
Gladly I go, gladly I surrender
Hopes and dreams exhausted
My old soul is weary
A fading fossil of myself
The past reduced to dust
A present with little value
All the mountains climbed
My old soul is weary.
Bob Boyd
I stood at her gravesite
my life over
a bouquet of flowers
in my trembling hands
the array of flowers
watered by the tears
dropping from my eyes
I cried and cried
a thousand more tears
as I mournfully wondered
why God had taken
the sweetest girl
the love of my life
away from me
just seventeen
dead in the ground
on that cold
September morning
my first love
my last love.
Bob Boyd
Some people want
to live
to be a hundred
they know nothing
about the dark nights
of living
too long a life.
They know
nothing
of the
myriad illnesses
that plague most
aging
out of existence.
The worst
the mind’s
demise
when you
become
oblivious of
everything
everyone
and your
vanished self.
Despair
when
friends, icons,
and
beloved spouse
pass away
so many gone
the worst
your spouse
a deep abyss
ever surfacing
sadness.
Of course
it’s
not all bad
there’s those
Golden Years
on canes
crutches,
and
in wheelchairs.
Bob Boyd