Category: Poems

People are dying all around me
At work, in my neighborhood, and in the news
Old, middle-aged, young, and babies too.
It’s like the Reaper has been loosened
In my semi-immediate vicinity
Killing people with a dogged impunity.
Worries me about my own mortality
If I’m next on Grim’s hit list
Or in some invisible warzone
With unseeable stealth bombs
Leaving no booms or residues
Quietly taken hordes of people out.
Maybe it’s just the usual suspect
Beelzebub up to his usual MO
Doing his cloven hoofed Devil’s work.

Bob Boyd

Sometimes
I wonder about
romantic love.
Is it real or
Nature’s ploy
to propagate
our species.
If that is
the case
what’s the point
of all of it?
Why the endless
streams of
humans flowing
In and out of
existence?
Maybe it’s
merely a
game of
bored gods
With little
better to do.

Bob Boyd

Amazingly nimble in trees
and on telephone lines.

Dangerously awkward on streets
and at dodging cars.

Squirrel, aerial acrobat,
what’s wrong with you?

In the trees and on telephone lines
none are your equal.

Yet in the streets and in front of cars
you fall apart.

Given you dodge predators in
the air and on the ground.

One would think streets and cars
would be cakewalks by comparison.

Yet thousands of your species
end as roadkill every day.

Maybe the panic I’d feel
seeing a 72 foot brontosaurus

Is the same panic you feel
when you see a giant car.

And you freak out and die
under those killer tires.

Bob Boyd

Clarence said he understood
the language of chirping cicadas
and could read the minds of ants.
He said he knew what birds were thinking
and could predict their futures as they flew.
See that sparrow flying overhead, he said.
in a week it will be in the stomach of a hawk.
I almost believed him, as confident as he was
until he said he knew what my dog Bo was thinking,
could easily read his every dumb dog thought.
Curious and a little offended by his insulting Bo,
I said, what the hell is my dumb dog thinking?
He’s blown away by how well I can read his mind.
You know how dogs can hear things we can’t?
Dogs can know when a psychic reads their minds.
Bo looked at Clarence and let out a howl
as if in agreement with what Clarence said.
Then Bo growled and jumped up curved sideways
suspended in the air like a professional athlete
and with a spectacular airborne twisting move
bit that soothsaying Clarence on the butt.
Bo never did like BS artists.

Bob Boyd

Hewn into rock hills in Lalibela
sacred second Jerusalem
stands in Ethiopia.

Place of pilgrimage
sacred site where
pilgrims come to pray.

For over a thousand years
infused with the prayers
of millions.

A giant etched cross
adorns the top sealed
with a promise of heaven.

Stone shrine conferring
blessings, the magnificent
Church of Saint George.

Bob Boyd

Ancient Greeks died
buried with coins
under their tongues,
their safe passage
to the underworld
where Charon,
bearded Ferryman
dressed in a tunic
and conical hat,
ferried the dead
across a river to
Hades, land of the dead
The obol coin, the
cost of admission.

Bob Boyd

In 1984, Satan possessed a toaster.
The story spread fast like a speeding roller coaster.
On one piece of burnt toast, the Devil wrote Satan Lives.
The nerve of Beelzebub; it makes you wonder what gives.
It was even claimed that through the toaster Satan spoke
As for me, I think it was just a devilish joke.

Bob Boyd

In Lake Champlain Vermont
lives an elusive sea monster
named Champ first seen
in 1609 and 299 times
after that reputedly.

Like many cryptids Champ
is a champion at hiding;
Many alleged sightings
But no proof.

Wouldn’t it be amazing
if one day Champ made his
debut and wowed the world
as a throwback to
prehistoric times.

And since no mate
has been seen
Champ must be
centuries old with an
anti-aging formula
as yet unknown.

I’d like it if Champ
came out of the lake
and declared his
authenticity to the world.

But somehow I suspect
from watching many
monster movies
that day would be
a bad day For Champ.

So I can understand him
staying out of the media
glare, being reclusive.
Because I’m reclusive too
and wouldn’t want all that
annoying paparazzi attention.

Bob Boyd

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