On my back I felt a soft tap

I turned around and saw cute you
I was six I think you were too
I remember your red hair
So pretty in the summer air

You smiled at me and ran away
But I never forgot that day
In over seventy long years
Though happy times and times of tears

If only I had talked to you
Under that summer sky so blue
It could have led to something new
And maybe true love as we grew

But alas the moment went by
I write that with a forlorn sigh
Maybe in the life beyond this
Older, true love we will not miss.

Bob Boyd

Mongolian Death Worm King of Worms
Hidden in the Gopi sands unfindable
Humble and possessing great wisdom
You seek not the fame you could have.
You know it’s a fickle fading light
You know if you made a world debut
Like King Kong, they’d cage and debase you
Like King Kong, they’d exhibit and destroy you
Because you are so different, so wondrous
And so uniquely beautiful.
Hail Mongolian Death Worm
King of Worms!

Bob Boyd

Inhabits the Mogollon Rim, Arizona
7 to 10 feet tall
hair all over its body
footprints 22 inches long
has godawful body oder
the scent is sickening
like dead fish and skunk
and raw sewage
mimics birds and animal
sounds
makes terrifying and loud
screams
throws rocks and sticks
at people
harasses campers
at night
who is this monster?
it’s the Mogollon Monster,
maybe Bigfoot or a
similar species
is it real or imaginary?
I don’t know, but I’m
not about to find out.

Bob Boyd

I met a wolf once
somewhere in Vermont
face to face
eyes to eyes
his eyes were luminous
and spoke of the wild
but there was also
sadness in his eyes
because he was
held captive in a cage
by a Native American
who had a permit to
keep a wolf encaged.

Bob Boyd

Because Grim knows I’m good with dying
he keeps avoiding me
but gives me close calls to try to torment me
hey, Grim, here’s what you don’t seem to know
torment me all you want with close calls
they don’t bother me at all
the me that is beyond the body
the me that is beyond the mind
the pure consciousness that I really am.

Bob Boyd

ASMR, Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response
is popular on YouTube today
mostly by soft speaking or whispering women
it makes you so incredibly relaxed,
listening to these skilled ASMRists
so relaxed it’s like a state of consciousness
you might want to stay in forever
I’m 80 now, and I’ve often been ASMR’d
I like it now and then, like a vacation for my mind
like a respite from the stressors of living
I was first ASMR’d at age 6, not by intention
a shoe salesmen helping me with shoes
had a voice so soothing that listening to him
I got profoundly relaxed, and like a delicious
daydream I was entranced by his words
and got deeper and deeper relaxed
many decades later when ASMR debuted on
YouTube it brought back that memory
and the incredible state of relaxation.

Bob Boyd

Started out as a singer
didn’t have enough success
so she and her husband turned
to black magic witchcraft
began making a lot of money
attracted many people
who paid for their spells
a politician who wanted to
win an important election
contacted Mona for a spell
she had him lay down in a dark room
with his eyes closed
instead of performing a ritual for the spell
she had her assistant chop off his head
cut his body into 18 pieces
and bury him 5 feet in a hole
covered over with concrete
the police picked up the assistant
on a drug charge a while later
he confessed to the murder of the politician
implicated Mona and her husband’s part in it
Mona, her assistance, and her husband
charged with the murder
and all suspected in the murder
and disappearances of other people
Mona, her husband and their assistant
ended up executed by hanging.

Bob Boyd

He’s outlived many people.
Friends and icons gone.
He yearns to join them,
To be freed of his old body.
Some say he’s delusional.
Death is just death.
No invisible worlds where
One is united with friends.
No gods. No angelic beings.
When you’re dead, you’re dead.
You and everything no more.
The doubters may be correct.
As insects are thought to
have no blissful heavens,
It may be the same for humans.
He’s completely okay with that.
If oblivion is what death offers,
He will have no awareness of it
When he takes his final breath.

Bob Boyd

The Hare Krishna’s say Krishnaloka is where you
Need to go after you die, if you can get there.
It takes a lot of chanting Hare Krishna’s to get there
And probably the right incarnation and the right karma.

Christians say heaven with Jesus is where you
Need to go after you die, if you can get there,
If you can avoid the snares of Satan’s hell
And probably pray enough and be good enough.

Muslims believe you go to a Muslim heaven
called jannah if you have lived righteously
according to their teachings.

Imagine if they were all right. Imagine if
There were multiple afterlife paradises
Depending on what religion or path you followed.

Imagine if the non-dualists were right, and
You had to get beyond all these dualities
And merge into the infinite Oneness.

Bob Boyd

He ponders how everything fades away,
time, material things, a woman’s looks.

Then he wonders if rocks are the
exception, if they erode into nothingness,
and it seems the planet will have to die
before that can happen.

And since rocks don’t appear to have
parents, or consummate, he wonders
how rocks are born.

He learns they come into being by
something called a rock cycle, and
to his amazement, they can live
millions to billions of years.

Then he wonders if rocks have any
sentience, and he learns about
The Panpsychic World, the belief
that consciousness is present in
all things akin to what the Mahayana
Buddhists call the Buddha nature
in all things, sentient and insentient.

He doesn’t know if that theory is
possible, and, right or wrong,
he doesn’t know if reincarnation is valid,
but imagine if reincarnation were true
and all things, sentient and insentient,
would eventually reach an afterlife state
of eternal bliss consciousness.

He likes the thought of that, the
equality and the promise of it.

Bob Boyd

Once I met a professor who believed serial killers
were the result of bad parenting and dysfunctional families

that these monsters were born more of nurture than nature

I couldn’t agree with that

many people come out of extremely negative family upbrings,
but they don’t take pleasure in torturing and killing people

they don’t take delight in torturing and killing animals in their childhoods

I believe serial killers are more nature then nurture, born that way,
like evil seeds

what I don’t know is how a loving God fits into this, and why,
if real and loving, that God allows so many young women to be tortured and killed by serial killers

if you’re an atheist, the answer is easy, no loving God, everything just random

the deaths of those young women, just wrong places at wrong times, nothing more.

Bob Boyd

UFOs hovering over nuclear installations around the world
speeding through the skies at unparalleled speeds
appearing and disappearing, perhaps into other dimensions
the theory is the aliens created us, and like their children
they don’t want us to nuke ourselves out of existence
I like the idea of a more advanced alien species
readied to protect us from destroying ourselves
I don’t like or believe the theory aliens created us,
as if we were little more than lab rats in an experiment
and where were the aliens when Japan got nuked?

Bob Boyd

Saw a documentary today about corrupt Buddhist monks
in Thailand
constant scandals, monks using drugs, seducing women,
and even murder
I learned Thailand has a monk police force of monks to
capture and discipline those who break their monastic vows
that is an indication of how widespread the problem is
it’s surprising when you learn of the holy, of all people,
being unholy
they cast dark clouds over the others living holy lives,
like the predatory priests in Catholicism
who sully the reputations of all the exemplary priests
and of the Catholic church
just as the corrupt Thai monks are sullying Buddhism
in Thailand
the documentary reported that just about every week
there was a scandal involving monks in Thailand
so disappointing for followers of faiths
such a dark stain on great religions
reminds me of how I became disenchanted with Eastern
spiritual practices when I learned of so many predatory
gurus preyed on wide eyed female followers
despite these gurus seeming enlightened and above
inappropriate behaviors
and in their sacred Vedas, it reads something like this,
“just as deer will avoid a burning mountaintop, sin will
avoid an enlightened being.”
not true, no matter how highly evolved, how enlightened,
a person becomes, that person still has to be circumspect
in his or her behavior.

Bob Boyd

If the planets stopped spinning,
And the sun and the moon exploded in the sky,
And with another big bang the universe died,
I’d still be loving you.

Bob Boyd

I have written about a dozen love poems, but to no one in particular or imagined. I guess I’ve written them partly because I felt it was kind of obligatory to write some, if one wrote poetry. Or, lol, maybe I’m a repressed romantic.

Here are some examples:

Remembering You

Butterflies flutter in blooming sunflowers.
Squirrels tightrope on telephone wires.
Crows darken clear cloudless skies.
Blue Jays sound alarms in sycamore trees.
Rabbits seek refuge in nearby bushes.
Cars rumble along neighborhood roads.
My mind drifts to sweet, summer days
When our love was so incredibly alive.

Bob Boyd

Loveliest of All You

I love how our love is growing as effortlessly as a flag fluttering in a gentle breeze.
I’m enraptured with each increasingly wonderful moment we’re sharing.
As the world keeps turning, my heart keeps turning toward yours,
and the spinning stars keep twinkling with joy for us in moonlit, romantic skies.
As the sun keeps becoming brighter blessing our sacred union,
the moon keeps growing fuller magnifying my increasing love for you.

I know this is something more than just mundane, romantic love.
This is like a cosmic happening with our stars finally aligning,
our destined souls finally uniting after so many incomplete loves
when our preordained love seemed as distant as a lone star in a faraway galaxy.
And I felt so forlorn throughout my life never finding the truest of true loves
that I finally found in wonderful, beautiful, loveliest of all you.

Bob Boyd

Before the Big Bang

I loved you before the Big Bang
When the universe was born
Before the planets spun in
Vast galaxies
Before the stars rose in
Night skies
And I know we are
Destined to be
Reunited soulmates
In this life
Or the next
This existence
Or the heavens

Bob Boyd

This Is True Love

Home from the Vietnam War, two tours,
Wheelchair confined, broken body, traumatized mind.
High School sweetheart wife waited through the
Years, the tears, the fears. Cared For him,
Stayed with him, loved him through PTSD,
Times of depression and despair, hospital stays,
Many health problems, her love, her caring unwavering
Through it all till at age sixty-eight when he died,
Wife at his bedside. Could love be truer than that?

Bob Boyd

Read Black Elk Speaks by John G Neihardt
back in the Age of Aquarius nineteen seventies.
Black Elk, powerful Medicine Man, mystic too.
Parts of the book trails of tears, sorrowful times
saddened me what Black Elk went through.
At the end of the book Black Elk did a rain dance
and the rains fell, according to John G Neihardt.

Night I finished the book had a mystical dream.
On the top of a street I lived near in my youth,
trouble making teenagers gathered wild and rambunctious.

Black Elk appeared looking old, decrepit, weak and helpless.
Teenagers yell, “Make it rain, make it rain, Black Elk!”
Knowing he couldn’t do it, taunting and disrespecting him.
He starts unsteady powwow dance steps, chants weakly,
Teenagers laugh and keep making fun of him.

I say, “Don’t, don’t,” at what they’re doing to ancient-looking Black Elk.
Black Elk keeps dancing and chanting weakly, feeble attempts.
Teenagers keep laughing hysterically, drop to the ground holding their stomachs.
Suddenly massive dark clouds roll in from the four corners of the world,
shocking, apocalyptic sight, day turning into night, end of the world feeling.
Teenagers’ screams pierce the air, terrified death is coming for them.

Smiling and amazed, I gaze at Black Elk, the dark clouds rumbling overhead.
Seconds later I’m standing in the center of the universe
beholding endless planets and stars. Woke up, mind blown,
knew it was more than a dream,
Genuine after death contact with a powerful medicine man.
I think because of empathy.

Bob Boyd

“At the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit. And that center is really everywhere. It is within each of us.”

Black Elk

“Hear me, four quarters of the world-a relative I am! Give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is! Give me the eyes to see and the strength to understand, that I may be like you. With your power only can I face the winds.”

Black Elk

I found this quote after the dream and saw the “four quarters” like the four corners in my dream, suggesting the four quarters might have been significant in Native American Spirituality.

I believe the dream I had of Black Elk was a genuine After Death Communication, ADC. I don’t have mystical or ADC dreams much, just two ADC dreams, and don’t seek to have them or lucid dreams.

As you may or may not know, believe or not believe, dreams are often a conduit for ADCs. Some ADCs involve scents. For example, suddenly the air around you is suffused with a deceased woman’s perfume or a deceased man’s after shave or other scents. There are other ways ADCs happen as well.

I also believe sometimes empathy can draw a deceased person to you in a dream. It’s probably rare, but I believe sometimes it happens. My two ADC dreams were because of empathy.

But, here’s what will puzzle me to my dying day. Houdini made a pact with his wife that if he left the world before her, he would try to contact her form the afterlife.

Surprisingly, the man would could break out of almost anything in this life was never able to contact his wife from the afterlife.

Greensboro Park contains a Vortex, a hotbed of paranormal happenings. You name it, seen it, parades of cryptids passing through – Bigfoot, Wendigo, Spring-Heeled Jack, to name a few, usually in the dark, rare occasions in daylight.

Saw Spring-heeled Jack, a rainy day in May. With high-powered spring heels he sprang up a 30-foot-tall tree and laughed at me; that devil knew I couldn’t jump that high.

Did you know Bigfoot has a twin? Saw them both in Greensboro Park, Christmas Eve 2023. Could be mistaken, but I think they wanted to give me a surprise Christmas present beneath twinkling Christmas tree lights, but I ran away too scared by the size and frightening sight of the Bigfoot duo to hang around for a Christmas present or my death.

The Vortex has a dark side. For some tuition money, a student at UNC, Greensboro, Michelle Burns, sweet, beautiful sophomore, started cryptid tours in Greensboro Park for $20 a head. Tours didn’t feature real cryptids, members of her sorority dressed as cryptids, disrespectful fakes, an affront to the Vortex.

As I foresaw in a dream and warmed Michelle about, but she wouldn’t listen, the Vortex took offense. During Michelle’s final tour, the Vortex opened, the skies thundered, Michelle screamed, the terrifying Vortex swallowed her, and she was never seen again.

Often on moonlit nights in Greensboro Park, like psychics coaxing dead people to go to the Light, I coax Michelle, who was my girlfriend, to come back to the park, and I beg the Vortex to forgive her and release her.

So far no luck; the vortex doesn’t forgive easily and will not be mocked.

Bob Boyd

I saw her in the grocery store in my perceptive, peripheral vision.
She was taking a long hungry look at me, which I liked.

When she looked away, I took more than a cursory look, sensed a possible thing.
Slightly past middle age, pretty in a blue dress, golden locks, a shade of gray.

Pushed my grocery store cart a respectful distance behind her, eyeballing her.
She began to morph into a Venus in front me, a goddess, a grocery store lights dream.

I spied a smiling Cupid lurking in the flower section drawing back his bow.
I thought maybe the gods of love have brought this Venus to me, true love at last.

My Venus poked through the vegetables, tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, rutabagas.
It was all so grand until she got to the onions and put two bags full into her cart.

Cupid frowned, fluttered his wings, put away his bow, and flew out of the flowers and away.
The horrid taste of onions assaulted my taste buds, and me and Venus were through.

Bob Boyd

Despite 75,000 alleged sightings,
I know why Bigfoot stays undercover.
He’s seen the movie King Kong, and
knows what happened to him.

Bob Boyd

I look at the names from back in 1964
and a slightly related memory of that time
comes back to me

I’m at a YMCA dance, and I spy a beautiful
red-hair girl, maybe a year younger than me
I ask her to dance and she accepts

I feel blessed and maybe a little unworthy
I’m so blown away by her red hair and her looks
I get tongued tied and cannot speak to her

months later three girls phone me
one of them says I danced with you once
I kiddingly replied, “You were lucky.”

the girls laugh and the one who said I danced with her
pays me back perfectly with a “No. You were lucky.
and tells me she was the red-hair girl

instead of telling her how I felt that night dancing with her
I just crack up laughing impressed by her comical comeback
but, damn, with hindsight I wish I had said to her

something like, I remember you. I remember how beautiful
you looked, and that I got so tongued dancing with you
that I was unable to speak, and you looked so beautiful that night

but, alas, that was just one of many things I should
have done differently back then, and I often wish I could
do a rewind, for example, good grades and going steady with that girl.

Bob Boyd