he liked to fish as much as he could.
he’d caught trout, perch, bass and more.
he’d caught so many fish he couldn’t keep score.
but one day after thirty years of avid fishing
he had an epiphany. he realized he’d been
wantonly taking all those fish lives for sport
instead of fishing for sustenance and survival.
what he had done amounted to no more
than a wasteful, selfish fish killing spree,
and he never fished again after that.

bob boyd

he woke up in a coffin
dark and terrifying.
it wasn’t a nightmare;
it was horrifyingly
real.

claustrophobic
he panicked
and screamed
and screamed
till his lungs
almost burst.

he scratched
the coffin frantically
in his crazed,
screaming state
trying in vain
to open it.

but the weight
of six feet
of freshly
shoveled earth
kept the
coffin hermetically
sealed and
the horror
engulfed him.

he panicked gasping
for his dying breath
over and over,
his heart pumping
like an overworked
failing piston,
and he mercifully died
of a massive heart
attack.

and he found freedom
from the coffin
as his spirit rose
out of the coffin,
out of the grave
and into the light
of the afterlife.

bob boyd

i kept wondering what ticked
inside her oblong brain
what the hell made
her the way she was
half crazy, half normal,
her brain short-circuited
her synapses
intermittently transmitting
her brain cells
sometimes fried
sometimes overcooked
one day she loved me
next day she hated me
i gave it a good year
all i could take,
my mind baked
from her split personality
her unceasing drama
her love hate
thing for me
and her hot and cold
temperament

bob boyd

those bastards the greys took my amie away from me.
they came through the walls. they froze me like a statue
before I could try to stop them from taking my love away.
somehow they floated through the walls with her,
and she was gone like the moon in morning daylight.
i have a horrible feeling they will never bring her back.
i was told they might be turning her into a hybrid.
oh, god how that worries me, the thought of them
turning my amie forever into a human alien freak.
it’s worse there is nothing i can do about it.
no way i can follow their otherworldly trail.
all i can do is pray and pray and pray
and hope those aliens come back again
and bring my amie back to me.

bob boyd

though i marvel at the ferocity of werewolves
under foreboding full moon nights.
and i love their dramatic transformations
from mere men to mighty beasts,

i prefer the aesthetics of vampires,
those magnetic, elegant creatures of the night.
i like how they are so debonair
and how with a mesmerizing gaze,
they can seduce even the most resistant beauty.

werewolves lack class and refinement,
uncultured, they are just savage beasts.
instead of wooing a comely lady
with hypnotic charms and enticements
they choose to tear her body apart,
like desecrating a masterpiece work of art.

and if you are a werewolf reading this,
you will get no apologies from me.
you are what you are;
i am what i am –
your worst critic.

bob boyd

he met bree through a spirit box.
she said loving things to him,
though she was disembodied
they hit it off, and he fell in love.
little did he realize the talks
were just in his receptive head,
a case of auditory pareidolia.

bob boyd

a playboy in his youth
had many beauties
his game got bad
in his elderly years
when he went bald
and his skin sagged
and wrinkled and
got aging spots
and he looked like
a walking talking
scarecrow and
even old ladies
in nursing homes
turned him down

bob boyd

falling off a tall building and
splattering on the pavement?

thrown bound and gagged
into a pit of poisonous spiders?

thrown bound and gagged
into a pit of poisonous snakes?

your life ended in the slow horrifying
grip of a giant python?

beaten senseless and thrown off a cruise ship
at night in shark infested water?

being slowly cut to death by a razor?

bound and burned out of this life in a raging fire?

devoured to death by starving hogs?

tied up and tossed into a pool
of bloodthirsty razor-toothed piranhas?

snatched off a shoreline by an alligator
and eaten chomp by chomp by it?

mauled to death by ferocious dogs?

savaged to death by hungry lions?

pray you don’t expire in any of these ways,
but if you had to, which one would you choose?

bob boyd

anatoly moskvin had a genius IQ
and spoke thirteen languages
claimed as a child he was forced
to kiss a waxed up dead girl.

when he grew up he slept
on little girl’s graves in
graveyards so he could
talk and listen to them.

he eventually dug up the
dead children, said they
wanted to be freed from
their imprisonment in the
caskets under the ground.

he brought them home
mummified them and
talked to them and
celebrated their birthdays
with them.

he did this in his parents
home, but they said they
never knew about it and
thought anatoly had just
built little dolls for fun.

due to his suspicious grave
desecrations on november
2, 2011 the police investigated
him and found twenty-six bodies
in his apartment and
in his parent’s garage.

anatoly was diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia and
sentenced to a psychiatric clinic
where he remains to this day.

bob boyd

fifteen-year-old Danny identified as a dog
his parents and his teachers went along with it
even when he barked too loud
at home and in school
he slept in a dog house in his room
he wagged his imaginary tale
his mother fed him soybean doggy bones
his gender fluid girlfriend Emma
took him for walks on a long leash
everything was grand until Danny growled at a pitbull
and the pitbull tore the shit out of him
now Danny identifies as a fire breathing dragon
and plans to scorch that pitbull into oblivion
once he heals from all the torn flesh and the bites

Bob Boyd

she joined the military for love of country
and became a combat soldier in a death zone.
she saw others dying all around her,
one was her boyfriend of seven days.
she never expected to see and experience
such endless carnage, such hellish horrors,
and so many young soldiers dying.
her company got ambushed, most killed.
she became a terrified prisoner of war,
suffered indignities she never imagined
at the barbaric hands of an enemy who
didn’t care about the Geneva Conventions.
their tortures and gang rapes left her
broken, brutalized and disabled.
she got discharged from the military,
the high cost of her military service
incurable PTSD and haunting memories
of what the barbarians did to her.
and she spent the rest of her days
being counseled at VA vet centers
adrift the civilian life she never
felt at home in ever again.

Bob Boyd

Full moons had a strange
lunar effect on him.
He wasn’t a werewolf.
He didn’t go bat crap crazy.
He didn’t go temporarily insane,
Or maybe he did a little.
When the moon was full he
claimed to have lived on it
In a long ago former life.
He said the moon had been
Populated millions of years
Ago by inhabitants like him.
He did look a little weird;
So it almost seemed true.
And during those full moons.
He would talk In a strange
language intermittently
Unlike any language on
Earth, which made you wonder.

Bob Boyd

long ago he set out
into the unknown world
he left a family
he never felt happy with
too much drama
too much trouble
too many beatings
in his troubled youth
a stint in the military
changed everything
he saw some
of the wider world
and realized he didn’t
fit in with his family
he self developed
beyond his
family’s understanding
alienating him
more from them
sending him farther
into the world
and all its opportunities
to become
a less troubled man
and find himself
the lone wolf

bob boyd

outside my apartment
a bird on a wire sings
i don’t recall the tune
maybe it’s an oldie
i never heard of
but it sounds good
and I wonder where
that bird learned it
maybe it was passed
down from generations
like a family heirloom
maybe it’s sung by
those birds everywhere

bob boyd

nazi minions easily led
to hate the peaceful
innocent jews
and destroy their
properties and
beat them up
empty-headed men
easily led into
a dark night of
mindless infamy
shame on those
who harmed
germany’s jews
shame of those
who devised that
diabolical scheme
hail to the jews
the wickedly
consistently
persecuted race
who prevail to
this dark day
despite the
evil antisemites
who still choose
to hate them

bob boyd

He used to love hunting, bagging bears and deers
Every exciting hunting season.
Until he saw some of his kills in a nightmare.
Somehow they had guns and shot him in the chest.
He heard the sounds of the blasting guns.
He woke up in a cold sweat relieved it was just a dream
Until he suffered a massive heart attack,
Feeling like he had been shotgunned in the chest,
He barely survived the heart attack and never hunted again.

Bob Boyd

in dreams she first appeared
with her sweet murmurings
her arousing nightly caresses
i thought she was my soulmate
i thought I’d found her at last

but when we consummated
her darkness invaded me
like an infusion of demonic evil
and she sucked the immortal soul
and the mortal human life out of me
i became some dark something
what exactly I do not know

i cried and pleaded with god for help
but no help ever came and i wondered
if a god existed in my inescapable afterlife
in my tormented dreadful fate

you might wonder how i’m writing this
being dead and disembodied
i’m channeling it through a human entity
he goes by the name of bob boyd
and has no awareness of writing this
he won’t see it written here
he won’t see the dark evil nature
of my wicked succubus mistress
when she comes for him in the night
like me he’ll think she’s his soulmate
before she consumes his life and his soul

jonathan stanworks (1960-1986)

A vampire jumped me and sang his fangs into my jugular vein.
Before I passed out, I felt like I was going to die.
Hours later I awoke traumatized and horrified.
I knew I had been cursed with the vampire virus,
and I hungered for human blood.

Yet somehow I didn’t have it in me to kill another human
or turn one into a vampire like me.
So I learned to draw my own blood and sate myself on it.

Remembering fictional vampire lore, I decided to look in a mirror
to see if I was there. I wasn’t. Not even a shadow. Not even a trace.
Desperate to try to end the curse, I grabbed the large wooden cross on my wall,
pressed it firmly against my chest and prayed to God
to deliver me from the curse. It didn’t work.
I thought about taking a knife and sharpening the cross
and plunging it into my heart, but I didn’t want to die despite the curse.

My girlfriend, Jana, knocked at my door. When I opened it she was shocked,
said I looked sick and had a pale, ghoulish complexion.
As I stood there eyeing her jugular vein I became irresistibly driven by a desire to feed on her rich, young blood.

I dastardly mesmerized her rendering her unable to resist my vampiric intentions,
and sucked the blood out of her jugular vein ravenously.
I had no qualms about what I did to her. My conscience had been annihilated,
and her sweet, warm blood flowing down my throat was supernaturally exhilarating.
When my girlfriend came to and displayed her fangs, we drifted into the night in search of prey.

Bob Boyd