He saw the electronic speed sign flashing 30 miles an hour. An old man whose life had gotten abysmally boring, he became inspired.

He turned around in his 2020 Honda Accord and drove thirty yards back down the street. He turned around again, and pushed the gas pedal to the floor and sped past the sign at 50 miles an hour.

After that, he made it a practice to speed up whenever he saw an electronic speed sign. He got an exhilarating thrill out of beating the assigned speed limits, like when he listened to an old song he liked, I Can’t Drive Fifty Five.

Beating those speed limits made him feel like he did in his youth, a hippie and a rebel protesting the Vietnam war and sticking it to the Man with his freak flag flying, his unconventionally long, wild hair.

As he got the hang of driving faster on electronical sign monitored streets, he kept breaking his speed records, his personal best, a buck and a quarter.

Bob Boyd

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

Going on forty and lonely, she married a man who simply was available.

He wasn’t the prince charming she had always dreamed of, but he was financially stable and a kind and decent man.

As the years with him passed by, she felt she had settled, and her love for him had waned.

At times, she wondered if she divorced him, she’d have another chance of finding her prince charming.

But she feared being alone for the rest of her life, and she had gotten much older, her body and face less attractive.

So she remained unhappy in her lackluster marriage and found her prince charming vicariously by watching soap operas on TV.

Bob Boyd

When his high school girlfriend, Angela, who promised to marry him left him for another guy

he joined the military. saw action in Iraq, and four years later returned to his city a war-hardened man.

He looked for Angela, still in love with her, learned she had moved to another city and had gone missing mysteriously.

Years later a dream, he saw she had been murdered and he woke up crying.

A day later Angela’s body was found buried in a forest, her murderer, a serial killer arrested and jailed.

Now with tears in his eyes, he brings flowers to her grave and prays he’ll see her again in a dream and when he dies.

Bob Boyd

Jonathan thought when she left the earth plane, he was finally free of her, his hateful ex-wife who burned down his house and died of a massive heart attack before being sent to prison.

But after she died, her spiteful spirit arose and terrorized him, manifesting as an apparition of a red-eyed, evil spirit with long razorlike claws, snakes for hair like a medusa and fanged teeth. She whispered curses in his head, tormented him in terrifying nightmares and appeared to him many times daily.

Nearly losing his wits, about to have a mental breakdown, he heard of a wizard who dressed in black, always had a raven perched on his shoulder, and had powers over dark forces. He visited the wizard to see if the wizard could end his ex-wife’s ghastly torments.

While Jonathan was sitting at a table and talking with the wizard, a cheerful old man with the raven on his shoulder, his ex-wife appeared floating in the air and threatening to kill them.

The wizard, unaffected, stood up, chanted a spell in a strange language, and his raven morphed into a dragon spirit and sprang at Jonathan’s ex-wife. Though she tried to claw the dragon spirit to death with rapid deadly slashes, her slashes only cleaved the air.

The dragon spirit swirled around her dodging her attacks and breathing blasts of fire on her. She screamed and shrieked, her arms flailing, her spirit body burned and flamed until all that was left of her were astral ashes that evaporated into the ethers.

The dragon spirit’s work done, the battle won, the dragon spirit morphed back into the raven perched on the old wizard’s shoulder, and Jonathan never saw his hateful, dead ex-wife again.

Bob Boyd

It was believed the legendary Chinese emperor Yandi was born from his mother’s telepathic union with a dragon. Imagine if on some other interdimensional level that were true.

Imagine if that were a common practice with mothers of future emperors in ancient China and dragons were real and true symbols of imperial power.

Though grandiose, I like the idea of that. And I like Chinese dragons.

I like that they are symbols of cosmic balance, luck, and protection.

I like the unique and exotic way they look, and that they are thought to be celestial.

Sure this is all mythological, but imagine if in some world, in some dimension, the claims and the stories about Chinese dragons were all true.

I like the idea of that. Maybe you do too.

Bob Boyd

Gifted Chinese poet Cu Gheng wrote poetry at an early age
One of the rebellious, Misty Poets who didn’t follow the CCP
Risked their lives writing poems that didn’t align with the party line
Hailed as a great poet writing innovative surrealist verse
Cu Cheng had one major flaw. He was insanely controlling
And physically abusive to Xie Yi, his beautiful, Chinese wife
Though he may have loved her in some crazed, unloving way
He murdered her with an ax and hung himself to death in 1993

Bob Boyd

and a real love of your life happened in the afterlife; and crushes that never happened but should have became real and lasting, true loves there too.

and were even better and realer than those fairy tales with happy ever after never ending loves that never happened in this often lovelorn, weary world.

imagine if the afterlife were a fairy tale-like paradise where you could just wish for a lasting true love, and like in the fairy tales that wish would come true.

sure I’m a dreamer with a vivid, maybe overactive imagination, but I’m writing these words like wishes hoping that dreams of eternal romantic love will come true in the afterlife evermore for me and for you.

Bob Boyd

When I lived in Vermont, I saw on TV that a woman had been shot to death by her POS monster of an ex-husband in a busy parking lot in front of a grocery store.

Things like this not only sadden me for the woman but enrage me that a man, like a monster, would harm or kill a woman.

And though I’m a lot about gentleness, peace and love, I’d have no problem with these monsters being put to death.

And I wish penalties and protections were stronger for woman physically abused by their supposed to be loving partners.

I’ve seen where Restraining Orders offer little protection with SOB abusers violating them, sometimes killing the insufficiently protected women.

I’d like to see serious jail times for these cowardly monsters among real men, the good husbands and boyfriends who are gentle, caring and loving to their wives and girlfriends unlike those cruel and wicked abusers.

I’m not a believer in eternal damnation, but were I God and if there were a hell, I’d send all these POS men to it, regardless of their excuses or so called extenuating circumstances.

Pisses me off that some of my gender are so cruel, fucked up, and monsters to women.

Bob Boyd

Started writing poems a little over a year ago after an unexpected cancer diagnosis and a brief hospital stay with many tests and examinations.

Now I’m 80 years of age and feel healthy as a racing horse with the cancer gone and still working out and riding my exercise bike for 2 hours daily.

I see these poems as being like swan songs that I write till the end of my life, going out with words that are like musical lyrics to me, a final symphony of swan songs.

The problem is a doctor at the hospital said I could live another 30 years, and that’s a long time for an aging mind to keep writing poems.

And, quite frankly, I don’t want to live 30 more years with the risks of debilitating diseases and mental impairments, like dementia.

Not to mention the diminished quality of life as one reaches the 90s and beyond.

But in the meantime, I’ll just keep composing these poems for as long as I can.

Bob Boyd

I don’t know about you, but I could never live
in those rocket ships astronauts travel in space with.

Instead of being a space cowboy, I’d be a space coward.

For example, the Boring Starliner rocket that the
astronauts were trapped in for over 9 months
was 390 cubic feet.

It was no larger than a small room or a large closet.

I’d get claustrophobic in such a small space
for even a day.

I’d fear things that could go wrong in space,
a barely known place.

I’d fear being blown up in a take off explosion blast.

I’m nowhere near as brave as those fearless
space travelers.

But I would be heroically brave in other circumstances.

Without hesitation, I would have taken a bullet for a young woman I used to work with.

I was too old for her for a romance, even though I know she had a crush on me, and I would have wanted to be with her if there hadn’t been over 40 years between us.

I had something close to unconditional love for her.

Because I’d lived a full life, I easily could have afforded to die for her.

I could not bear the thought of her hopes, dreams, her life ending in such a horrible way.

Despite that gallant thought, which I would have gone through with instantly,

I’d be a coward in living like the brave astronauts traveling in a rocket ship no larger than a small room.

Bob Boyd

I glance out of my second floor apartment window and see a sparrow sitting on top of the For Rent Sign stuck in the lawn for the vacant apartment below me.

The sparrow looks left and right and flies to the ground, maybe for a worm, if sparrows eat worms like robins.

Maybe he saw some other delicious morsel like a small bug.

He flies back on the top of the sign and doesn’t appear to be eating.

I’m wondering what he’s really thinking about sitting on top of that sign.

I know he’s not considering moving in, and I know he has a cortex with many neurons just like I do, so maybe he can think like me.

Then I wonder if he is pondering the nature of existence or maybe kinda like a Zen Buddhist contemplating the sound of one wing flapping.

I try to telepathically get inside his head to plumb his thoughts and the depths of his avian brain, but it’s a cold and rainy day, my brain waves are askew,

and my psychic transmissions have been rendered partly cloudy, and the sparrow has flown away anyhow, perhaps having psychically

divined what I was about and decided to fly away to avoid my faux pas invasion of his feathered privacy.

Bob Boyd

I remember how when my first girlfriend
a lovely teenage, blonde beauty,
would stare into my eyes with
this look that said she wanted
me to kiss her.

In those incomparable moments,
everything vanished from sight,
except her mesmerizing look.

It was as if the entire universe,
the entire world, and everything in it
except her look became nonexistent.

And her kiss, that sweet kiss,
took me beyond this world
into a place that felt like a heaven.

Bob Boyd

George Gilligan, his wife, Theresa, and
his two children, Lisa, 5 and Gregory, 4
arrived at their home in Evansville,
Indiana on January 14, 1980
and were shot to death by a killer
named Donald Ray Wallace,
who had been robbing their home.

It so sad and so tragic that often in
this world, good people who harmed
no one are randomly murdered, as
if this life is often like a matter of
good or bad luck.

And even though most of us feel safe
and take precautions to avoid being
victims of murders, sometimes we
become the randomly murdered like
all those who felt as if random murders
only happened to other, unknown people
they saw or heard about on the news.

Bob Boyd

Bob Boyd

I see the tree leaves dancing in the wind
outside my apartment window. It’s
as though the wind has miraculously
imbued them with life.
I wonder if the leaves have any awareness
of how the wind feels against their epidermis,
and if the feel of the wind is pleasing to them.
Were I a leaf, I think I’d like the feel of the wind
and the joy and the fun of dancing in it.

Bob Boyd

How beautiful are the white tree petals blossoming on the tree next to the second floor apartment I live in. When I was working, I never noticed them, perhaps blinded by the business of my daily affairs and not as aware of nature budding before me as I am now that I’m retired and my eyes have opened more to the goings on outside my apartment in the street and surroundings below. And I am wondering how long those beautiful petals will last before they die like me and everything else does in this temporary life that used to seem like it was forever when was when I was a child and like those newly blossomed white tree petals. And dying was something that only happened to old people, who seemed born old and destined to die.

Bob Boyd

I saw a documentary by David Paulides who writes books about the missing 411 people, those who have vanished, usually in national parks under mysterious circumstances with no confirmable traces of what happened to them.

For example, a person goes missing, and all that is found of him is his shoes and trackers, search and rescue dogs, and others never find him or any clues as to what happened to him.

Now, as many have speculated about the 411s, David Paulides seems to have joined the chorus of the very real possibility that aliens are silently and stealthily snatching 411s from this world.

When you watch his documentary, you see some credible people who had encounters with aliens, one who like a fish thrown back in the water, was told he wasn’t what the aliens wanted and returned to earth dazed and astonished by the abduction.

I’m at an age when I no longer feel like hiking. But after reading and listening to many accounts of missing 411s and the allegedly hundreds of thousands that have gone missing in national parks and elsewhere, were I younger, I doubt I’d ever go hiking in forests again, like I did when I was younger. Unless I went with a group of people and one or more of them were armed.

When you read and/or listen to enough of these cases with even hunters and trackers among the 411 missing, it’s easy to get paranoid about hiking in a forest alone or with others.

Bob Boyd

Cold spell has dropped in just when it was getting
comfortably warm, just when I was enjoying it.
Annoys me when the weather becomes so inconsistent
from warm to cold.

I’m fine with it staying one way or the other, but to have a cold spell as spring as set in, and flowers have begun to awaken into the warmth, is disturbing to me.

I don’t care when the weather’s wintry how cold it becomes as long as it stays consistently cold.
Likewise with warm weather I prefer a consistency rather than wavering from 70 degrees to 40.

Perhaps became I’m in a much older body, my inner thermostat has gotten cranky just like some old men supposedly do.

If that’s so, hopefully my disposition never gets cranky too.

Bob Boyd