Month: March 2024

Sound of It

In a tranquil field
Flowers and weeds
Locked in mortal combat
On the serengeti plans
Lions
Hunting prey
In the cosmos
Black holes
Devouring stars
In a junkyard
In Kentucky
A mechanic
Dismembering cars
Sitting at my computer
In Greensboro, NC
I don’t know what
This poem means
I just like the
Sound of it

Bob Boyd

I’ve Got to Stop Listening to 30s Music

30s music romantic lyrics, so good, so sublime
Sometimes they start to get to me like
When a crooner sings about meeting
His love of a lifetime under a blue moon
Or another sings it had to be you
When he finally meets his dream lady
Then another sings about saying good night
To his sweetheart and how they’ll meet tomorrow.
And some women with a sweet enchanting voice
Sings she’s got a feeling she’s falling in love with me
And I start remembering what it feels like to fall in love
When I get elated, romantic feelings I’ve just about forgotten
And that woman becomes the most beautiful woman in the world
Making all over women lackluster by comparison
Making my emotions enlivened with unending love for her
Longing for her incomparable company every single day
Thinking about her incessantly, remembering things she said.
And I start feeling like bringing an imaginary woman dozens of roses
And writing incredibly romantic love poems to her
And forgetting I’m kind of a don’t need no woman monk,
But oh how I love those 30s music lyrics, so good, so sublime.
And I love that music and those lyrics so much
That I’ll never stop listening to 30s romantic music.
I’ll just have to stay strong and forget about women …
Forget about women … forget about women ….

Bob Boyd

Country Living

Thought I’d love country living
Breathing clean country air every day
Avoiding congested city traffic and crazy drivers
Observing deer, a variety of birds, and other animals
Strolling down quiet, peaceful country roads at night
Living a carefree low pollution serene life
Enjoying a refreshing country living dream
Woke up from the dream after a about a week
Stores shut down at 9 PM every night
Nothing nearby for a late night smack
Or a craving for some pizza and a cola
Nearest grocery store like a continent away
Strolling down country roads perilous at night
No sidewalks, risks of rabid animals, narrow roads
Locals drove like maniacs down those narrow roads
Like nearsighted drivers racing in the Indy 500 at night
Good luck to you if you were taking that nightly stroll
Was relieved when I packed up and returned to the city.

Bob Boyd

Guppies

Maybe the Hindus have it right. Maybe we reincarnate,
starting as the lowest lifeforms and evolving up to
human births and eventually attain enlightenment
where we get off the wheel of rebirths and attain the
Sat Chit Ananda, the Eternal Bliss Consciousness.
I’m thinking about this because as I look at the guppies
in my aquariums swimming about merrily, I’m wondering
do they just die into nothingness, and that’s it? Oblivion,
and it’s over for them? Or maybe they die into the tunnel
of White Light and emerge into a guppy heaven. A celestial
world freed from oppressive fish tanks and whatever cares
earthbound guppies have, swimming and playing ecstatically
in bliss-laden bodies of water, vast as oceans with no predators
to annihilate their joyous lives in an eternal, aquatic paradise.

Bob Boyd

Bishop Bonner, The Devil’s Dancing Bear (1500-1569)

Bishop Bonner did the Devil’s work
Under Queen Mary the First in 1555
Torturing hundreds of Protestants
To renounce their faiths,
And become Catholics
In the Tower of London.
Breaking many on the rack,
Burning many at the stake.
Supposedly a man of God,
He had the modus operandi of
A cruel, murderous psychopath.
But when Queen Elizabeth
Ascended to the throne in 1558,
Bishop Bonner was thrown
In jail and died there in 1569,
His legacy of infamy the only
remnant of him remaining.
Would liked to have been an
Observer in the afterlife,
To see where he went,
Perhaps indeterminately
Broken on the rack and
Burned at the stake.

Bob Boyd

A Long Ago Fairy Tale Love

Summer days on the shores of a picturesque pond
His head on her lap blissfully gazing up at her
The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen
The backdrop of a beaming summer sun,
Enhancing her radiant blonde hair,
her incredible, goddess-like looks.
Knew they had a fairy tale love forever.
Though they lived states away and only saw
Each other during teenage summers,
He never knew love could be so wonderful,
So consuming, so blissful beyond anything
he’d ever experienced or could ever have imagined.
But like Icarus who flew too close to the sun
When she cheated on him and ruined everything,
His wings of love singed, he crashed to the ground.
Days turned into dark nights of dead dreams.
A saddened sun sobbed behind consoling clouds.
A melancholic moon cried in a lovelorn night.
And rivers of tears fell from his eyes
Over the loss of a fairy tale love.

Bob Boyd

Maximum Gratitude Beyond Measure

This may sound kinda contrary, but I’m grateful I got cancer, no regrets. It vanquished my whitecoatitis; It liberated me from medical fears. It gave me admiration for the medical profession. It abolished my hate of hospitals; now I love what they do, though I still don’t want to be stranded in them, and I hate those freakin’ unwieldy hospital gowns. I’ve become like the phoenix out of the ashes, more inwardly powerful, my character enhanced. I’m grateful for the knowledge of cancer I gained and for all the wonderful infusion room nurses who like angels on earth helped save my life. I like how “I’ve been there,” kinda like street cred and can connect, commiserate, and relate with others with cancer so easily. It made my presentations ten times more powerful, my kinda like street cred makes me more legit. The worst thing happening, the dreaded C gave me the calmness of a Zen Master, something I never had even with years of attempts to reach that elevated state. And if I have to face cancer again, I’m game. And if it kills me I’m good with that too. The way I see it, I get to go to my real home, the abode of unconditional love and eternal bliss. You may doubt that, but I’m as sure as you are a living, breathing human being reading this that that’s where I’m going. I base that on extensive research into the land of NDES, shared death experiences, deathbed visions, a mystical experience I’ve had for over 50 years and having experienced bliss beyond description and the peace beyond understanding many times in the past and an unwavering faith in the Ruler of Time and Space despite His name being taboo in many quarters now. And this is a stream of consciousness poem.

Bob Boyd

The Birdman of Stirling Castle

In the Autumn of 1507 in Stirling, Scotland
an Italian-born abbot, John Damian de Falcuis
Studied birds in flight and believed he could fly.
He fashioned the feathers of eagles into wings
He wore on his arms. Clad in the makeshift
Flying machine, he leaped off Stirling Castle.
For a moment, he hovered in the sky
As if, like a bird he really could fly;
Then plummeted seventy feet to
The unwelcoming ground. Miraculously,
he survived, woke up in a doctor’s urgent care,
Many injuries and a shattered thigh bone.
He never could walk properly after that
And he stayed out of the sky.

Bob Boyd

Forgotten

Clouds wandered in azure skies
Rivers poured through towns and glens
Flowers swayed in windswept fields
Deer and elk frolicked in fall forests
But in a time forgotten cemetery
Hidden among quiet oak trees
Defaced and abandoned
Not a soul stirred

Bob Boyd

Imagine if You Were Born to be Fish Food

Imagine if you were born fated to be fish food. Imagine knowing your demise was only a purchase away. And since you couldn’t go to church and no proselytizers would be knocking on the door of your plastic container to save your soul, you wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hades of getting to heaven.
You’d probably be hoping that death was a Hindu thing where you could come back at a higher birth.
Maybe living the good life as one of the privileged, high born fish who ate the fish food. If your karma had been even better, maybe you’d come back living the dream as one of the customers buying the fish food.

Bob Boyd

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