he thinks or says things
like wow
nice legs

holy moly she’s
so hot

and I wonder if
the female bettle

has beauty enhancements
like perfumes and
lipsticks

or if unlike human
females

she’s born with those
enhancements installed

and has no need to
improve upon her
natural beauty

Bob Boyd

I’m kidding around here. I write poems about many things, even insects sometimes. And I lie giving insects human like behaviors in some of my poems about them. For example:

Stink Bug on My Computer

A stink bug just flew on my computer screen.
though they’re grotesque looking, I like them.
but I must admit the first time I saw one
It looked so bizarre it startled me,
wondering if it was harmful and would sting or bite.

Rarely had I seen a weirder looking bug.
It had kind of a threatening don’t touch me look.
We don’t have them where I’m originally from,
just outside of Boston, MA in the milder burbs.

Despite not knowing if it was harmful,
I couldn’t kill it, just coaxed it onto a tissue
and walked it outside my apartment
into the freedom of a warm summer’s night.

After I learned stink bugs were harmless,
I grew to like them, as I like the one
that just soared off my computer, tiny wings flapping,
airborne for a few seconds in lamp lit skies,
and it landed on a runway somewhere behind me.
In a little while he might land on me.

Maybe he’ll sit on my shoulder like a best pal
and watch YouTube videos with me and listen to 30s music
and tearfully tell me how he can’t meet any female stink bugs online.
I’ll say I feel your pain, been there with female women. Never going back.

Maybe after he pours out his love life miseries
and cries for a while on my supportive shoulder,
I’ll tell him he’s a handsome enough stink bug
to find a decent and beautiful female stink bug
who will be his true love and treat him like a prince among stink bugs.

And maybe I’ll adopt him as an exotic pet.
I wouldn’t tether him to a restraining leash
or stick him in a four-sided oppressive aquarium,
or imprison him in a soul crushing, miniature cage;
that is if stink bugs have souls, which I imagine they do.

But mercy me I don’t know what I’d feed him,
and I doubt I’d find stink bug food at PetSmart.
I could probably find him some food on Amazon,
hopefully with a five gold stars rating
and next day shipping between 4 and 8 am.

I hate that it has such an undignified, unfitting name.
I would have jazzed the name up with some Latin,
like Incredibilis Insectum or maybe something more relatable
like Super Cool Bug or Bug That Only Stinks If You Mess With It.

And by the way, stink bugs only stink If you
harm or try to crush them to death,
as if harmed or dead they get the final say.

Bob Boyd

Some people aren’t happy
unless they’re making
trouble for others

they’re psychology has
to be terminally
screwed up

they seem to confuse
being happy with

being unhappy

piling woe upon woe
upon themselves

but mostly on others

and God forbid if ever
you get tangled up

with one of them

pray you can get out of
their sticky webs

before you can dragged
into more

trouble and sorrows
than you ever

could have imagined.

Bob Boyd

This poem is about people who have annoyed the hell out of me and others. People who seem to live and breathe to make trouble, as if that were the sole purpose of their lives.

I even saw/experience this with an elderly couple me and my agency tried to help. No matter how hard you tried to help them it was never appreciated, and they always were trouble with every agency they sought help from. And they badmouthed all the agencies that tried to help them.

My thinking for them was even if you’re a miserable, mean and trouble-making, SOB, at least fake being halfway decent when you come to an agency seeking help.

So nice to travel by train,
compared to by plane,

seeing the scenary
leisurely instead of

high in the sky
with barely a view.

No airpockets, no fears
of falling from
the sky.

I’ll take traveling
by train

over by plane

any day.

Bob Boyd

Alas, this used to be my dream, traveling cross country in a train, sleeping on it over night, and dining in it on the way. The best would be watching the scenery passing by all the way across the U S of A.

I won’t do this because at my age I now longer desire to travel, and I don’t have the money for a cross country trip, and I won’t use my savings. And if I had the money, I wouldn’t spend it on a train trip. But it was a nice enough dream to write a short poem about.