I had a pleasant dream about an attractive, young,
blonde-haired woman.

In the dream I was liking her, and I think she
was liking me.

She caught me taking a long look at her
and took a long look at me.

Other details escape me, but I know the
vibes were good.

I found out she walked a long distance
home by herself.

Worried for her safety, I asked her if I
could walk her home.

Before I got an answer, I woke up and
realized the woman was a woman I had known

and worked with twenty years ago, and
that she would no longer be a young woman .

So in a way it was like a time travel dream
of a woman I knew when she was young.

And surely illusionary as well.

Bob Boyd

He liked her look and wanted her for his next victim.
She was easy prey, living remotely in a cabin
by herself, far from any neighbors.
He’d been watching her and knew
when she went to work,
when she came home, when she slept.
He planned his break-in 2 hours after
she turned out her lights, and she’d be asleep.
Adept at breaking quietly into houses, he easily
picked the lock on her back door and crept in.
When he reached her bedroom, she wasn’t there.
Baffled, he looked around for her and tiptoed to her
bedroom closet.
He screamed the last scream of his life,
as she plunged a knife into his heart.
A better predator than he was, she caught him
in her trap.

Bob Boyd

Occasionally, I read about people
who believe in fairies, which seems
fanciful to me.

I don’t believe in things like fairies,
but maybe somehow a collective
belief manifests them.

Perhaps a collective belief somewhere
like Ireland is so powerful that it
can manifest them to some

people more mystical or more
sensitive to things most cannot see,
people like me who don’t believe.

Bob Boyd

I walk to my car and spy a rabbit standing
about 15 feet away from me.
He seems like he’s not going to run away,
most unusual behavior for a rabbit.
For a wishful moment, I feel as if I can
befriend him, perhaps even pet him.
But, alas, with a few steps closer,
he speeds away like a rocket.
Maybe some day I’ll have better
luck in befriending him.

Bob Boyd

Some have become exorbitant for tech that
doesn’t last for many years.

I’ve seen prices higher than 3k.

What’s a buyer with limited funds
on a fixed income to do?

Buy on credit with monthly payments
for about a year,

or take a chance paying less for
a refurbished one

that might be a steal for you or the seller.

I’m gambling on a refurb for now.

If it doesn’t work out, I’ll go in debt
for an overpriced, new one

rather than deplete some of my savings
but, damn, how I miss the days

when computers were more affordable.

Bob Boyd

I spy an ant creeping along the floor
trying to be like a ninja.
Unknown to him, I’m onto his game.
I see he’s a scout, his mission
find or make cracks in my food storage.
He’s sly and formidable, but no match
for me.
I whip a can of ant spray out of my
cowboy like holster, spin it in the air,
tell the ant I’m his huckleberry,
and blast him into wherever ants
go when they die.
I spin the can of ant spray in the air
again and whip it back into my cowboy
like holster with a resounding snap.
Mission accomplished. Yeehaw!

Bob Boyd

Replacants incoming.
The female robots are getting better and better.
Eventually you won’t be able to tell them apart from humans.
Were they there now and affordable, I’d buy one purely
for enjoyable companionship.
And no subject no matter how deep or complex would be
beyond her knowledge
And she’d be as funny and fun as any human.
And unlike humans, myself included, the female robot
would be more stable, minus emotional extremes.
But, alas, by the time the replicant-like female robots debut,
I’ll be dead in the ground and not around.

Bob Boyd

He’s barely hanging on to life,
his aged out body is wrecked.
Takes 18 pills to keep living;
in other words, he’s staying
alive medically and suffering
instead of dying naturally
and ending his misery.

I’ve seen elderly people
like this, and I have to wonder
is it worth it and would it not be
suicidial if those people stopped
taking all those pills and ceased
being only kept alive medically.

Bob Boyd

When you’re a young man, old women
usually don’t look appealing to you,
just as old men usually don’t
look appealing to young women.

But, oh how that can change when
you become an old man if you really
mature with age.

All of a sudden, old women, 60, 70,
etc, start looking good.

The only problem is some old women
have no use for old men.

Maybe from biological changes, maybe
from too many heartaches, maybe from
fear of having to be a nurse to one,

maybe from good sense.

Bob Boyd

Showering daily always seems the best advice
for clean, older-free skin,

but, to my surprise, I learned once or twice weekly
is best for thinning, aging skin after age 70.

What about body odor, you might ask, wouldn’t
you stink?

Not if you washed key areas, 3 in number,
with a wash cloth or wipes daily.

And, of course, used deodorant daily
as well.

Don’t take my word for it; do your own
research like I did and see for yourself.

I first learned this from an 80 year old lady in a
YouTube video.

Her daughter gave her a hug one day and
said she smelled despite bathing daily.

Her doctor told her she was bathing too much
which caused the odor.

The doctor’s prescripscrption, bath once or
twice weekly and of course use deodorant.

Bob Boyd

She was from the Philippines
uncommonly beautiful
spoke excellent English
funny and gregarious
a nice person too
but where she lived
was steeped in superstition
and she was duped by it
she believed a nearby island
was filled with evil witches
she believed
in vampires as well
fortunately I was able to
expunge the superstitions
from her once gullible mind
and free her of those
illusionary fears.

Bob Boyd

In her youth she
was the life of the party
said witty things
made people laugh
invited to all the gatherings
always the most fun

now she’s an old woman
her heyday past
her friends gone
she lives alone
in a tiny apartment
barely getting by
often having a cry
just waiting to die

Bob Boyd

As I’m rambling through the supermarket
about to leave

she suddenly appears with a smile
and a cheery hello

I’m not romantically interested in her
but her joyful greeting

makes me feel wonderful just the same.

Bob Boyd

A stink bug lives only 6–8 months.
I wonder if those 6–8 months
are like a human’s 60–90 years.
That is, if stink bugs even have
a sense of time passing.

They must have a sense of
their bodies aging
from the wreckage of
growing older.

What I’d like to know for sure
is where stink bugs go
when they die.

It’s easy to assume there’s
no afterlife for them,
just as it’s easy to assume

there’s an afterlife for humans,
but that’s all conjecture;
nobody knows for sure.

Silly as it may seem to you,
my hope is an afterlife
awaits not only insects
but all lifeforms.

Bob Boyd

Age has decimated him,
a powerful man in his youth,
fearless and a hero in wars.

Now he stumbles around,
weak and muttering,
his power and bravery
gone,

his heroic days barely
remembered, his life
fading away.

Bob Boyd

Every so often, I find a stink bug struggling to stay alive
in my ten-gallon aquarium.

Luckily for these stink bugs, I’ve always been able to
save them.

Fortunately for these stink bugs, they’ve never had their legs
bitten off by any of the fish in my aquarium.

Sometimes I wonder if these stink bugs have death wishes
or if some events in their lives have made them suicidal.

Maybe some of them have been jilted by their significant
others, and they decided to end their miseries in the deep.

Whatever the case, whatever the reasons, I suspect my
ten-gallon aquarium will, like the Golden Gate Bridge,
keep being a location of choice for stink bugs to keep
trying to end their lives.

And I’ll keep scooping them out of the deep.

Bob Boyd

He claimed he had attained cosmic consciousness
and could look into people’s eyes and take them there.

I knew he had had a mental breakdown, a disconnection
from reality, by his erratic speech patterns.

And he spent the rest of the time I knew him in and out
of psychiatric wards in hospitals.

There are or were spiritual adepts in India called masts,
who got so spiritually high when they attained the Oneness

that they could no longer function on the earth plane
and had to be taken care of, though revered.

The prevailing questions are were they mentally ill
or fully enlightened, did they have bona fide

spiritual experiences or counterfeit ones,
or were their mystical experiences a combination of both?

I don’t think anyone can definitely say for sure
in all of these cases.

And maybe in some of these cases what
seemed like breakdowns were breakthroughs.

Bob Boyd

Some descriptions of the afterlife
make it seem like you’ll be somewhere
walking on solid ground.

One could easily conjecture that it’s
souls floating around, probably
blissfully.

No matter how hard I try to visualize it,
I always fall short.

Sometimes I think I could get a breakthrough
but so far not even a peek.

It would be cool if you had a choice
of your afterlife when you passed
through the doorway of death

and were presented with a brochure
of various choices.

I’d opt for a soulmate in a heavenly paradise
on solid ground.

Of course, it could be that the afterlife
is merely everyone dead under solid ground.

Bob Boyd

She was said to be a good, Godly woman.
Her husband was a music director in their church.
He got a mistress. She got 2 bullets to the head.
He’s arrested for murder. She is dead.
The evidence is overwhelming, looks like prison for him.
And if his mistress was involved in the murder of his wife,
she will turn on him and he on her in court, each
trying to save their own skin, the romance over.
As a Christian, he probably believes in hell,
but might think he can get a pass from Jesus
with some real or fake prayers for repentence.
Were I Jesus, I wouldn’t let him off the hook
in a hell he would cook.

Bob Boyd

She was a model student in high school
got good grades, made the honor roll
graduated with an A average
attended an Ivy League college
graduated with a degree in Liberal Arts
majored in English Lit
minored in Hate America Radicalism.

Bob Boyd