He jogged and jogged and jogged
on sidewalks in many cities
on hot days and cold days
in summers and winters.

He ran fast and he ran slow
and he always ran alone.

Sometimes people yelled at him.
Sometimes dogs chased him.
But they didn’t deter him;
He kept jogging every day.

But the sneaky sidewalks
ended his jogging days
with a knee injury
that even an operation
didn’t properly heal.

So he became a walker
and never got injured again.

Bob Boyd

While she was crazily unhinged
over his political choices,
she told him he was nuts
despite her acting that way.

She thought she knew it all
about the political scene,
even though her frame of
reference was a biased
fake news TV show.

Her low info political tantrum
drove him away, and though
he was politically stupid
compared to her astute
political knowledge from
the one fake news show,
she cried all day when
he was gone and wondered
how he was unable to see how
brainwashed and dimwitted
he had become politically
by watching stupid alternative
news shows on the Internet.

Bob Boyd

He read there were microplastics in honey
and maybe in everything else.

Supposedly those microplastics could cause cancer.
He thought to himself what can’t cause cancer nowadays.

It’s supposedly in goddamn everything you breath in or eat,
and one day it’s not in some of those things

like how eggs are dangerous to eat one day
and healthy as hell to eat the next day,

like how chocolate is good for you heart one day
and contaminated with lead and cadmium the next day.

He gulped down two spoons of store bought honey
he had stirred into his instant coffee

savored two delicious pieces of Hershey chocolate
and thought screw it, we’re all going to die.

Bob Boyd

It grew colder and colder in her apartment.
She had on many layers of clothing.
Her heat had gotten too expensive.
She was afraid of the high cost of getting warm
and didn’t turn on the heat in her apartment.
She wondered if she could endure the freezing cold
as she began to shiver some more.
Her government had cut off the heat benefit,
which helped her to barely afford the cost of heat.
She had only a pauper’s pension,
barely enough to survive,
and the cost of heat was no longer affordable.
Her breathing became shallow;
she could feel the cold in her bones.
She began feeling drowsy even
though she didn’t think she was tired.
Her teeth chattered and she became disoriented
and took off all her clothes and succumbed to the cold,
leaving the world naked and frozen to death.

Bob Boyd

She was described as an oversexed, trashy person
who thought she was the belle of the ball.

She was said to have a deep black hole inside her
and a deceptive heart and a demonic soul.

She was skilled in the spidery dark arts of marrying for love
and killing for profit.

Her siren like looks and charms seduced and netted monied men
The seven she married in seven states had big insurance policies.

Six of them ended up dead and she got obscenely rich, but when
she failed at killing number seven in Texas, he shot her in the head.

Bob Boyd

The grass shivered.
The rocks quietly coughed.
The trees shook off the offending snowflakes.
The insects hunkered down.
A bird flitted about on a telephone wire
when the snow settled down.
I don’t know where the other birds went.
Nary a squirrel or a chipmunk was seen,
but a few rabbits frolicked in the snow.
As for me, I stayed inside watching movies
and drinking coffee and hot chocolate.

Bob Boyd

Even though he didn’t know what
imamorate meant,
he had one.

It lasted for seven unlucky years
with her and him
driving each other crazy
until his inamorata left him
and he became her
persona non grata.

Bob Boyd

The kids in high school laughed at her clueless
questions in all her classes.
They said she was stupid for asking so many
dumb questions for things, which
should have been easily obvious.
They stopped the laughing and the ridicule
when she got all A’s in all her classes
and became the class valedictorian.

Bob Boyd

he never did anything of value,
drank too much and always screwed up.
never could hold a job or a woman.
spent his final days homeless
living in homeless shelters
and on the stone cold streets
drunk and begging for money.
bemoaned living a worthless life,
regretted having wasted his
years in drunkenness and failure
until he found some redemption
when he overcame his drinking,
when he became like a saint
helping legions of homeless people
get out of the streets and
quit their debilitating addictions
and get help for their physical
and/or mental health conditions
and lead better, happier lives.

when he died, a thousand people
attended his funeral and felt sure
he’d found a place in heaven.

Bob Boyd

Don’t feed the trolls, people say.
They’re just meanspirited people
hungering for some attention.
Imagine if you could push a button
and zap the troll’s computers
and cell phones into oblivion.
Imagine if you could shut them off
forever and ever from the Internet
and just have decent and polite
people engaging in friendly chats.

Bob Boyd

He never got over
the death of his
beautiful wife
of over 30
wonderful years.

Even ten years
later, his eyes
still tear up
when he holds
one of her dresses
and thinks of her.

When he holds one
of her dresses,
he imagines her
still in it and sighs.

Then he comes out
of his reverie
and awakens
to the
painful reality
that she is never
going to be in
that dress again.

And torrents of tears
fall from his eyes.

Bob Boyd

You are old,
pushing 80.
You are alone
without love
and you think
you’d like to
find a woman
to cherish and
love.

But try as much
as you will
to hide the fact
the sword of
Democoles
hangs over any
old couples love
you could find,
even if you
could find any
love, pushing 80,

You know that
death will be
racing toward
both of you
with misery
on its heels
for one of you.

Bob Boyd

I hear the leaves running on the street beside me
as I walk along the sidewalk.
At least that’s the way it appears, courtesy
of the rambling wind tonight.
It surprises me that in the near end of my life
my senses seem to have evolved
into a higher perception of the world around me.
It’s as if I’ve been given unexpected sense
along with the wisdom of aging.
Maybe tomorrow, I’ll hear and understand
the whisperings of the wind and
the murmurers of the leaves.

Bob Boyd

Maria Marten (1801-1827)
suffered a tragic life.
An attractive woman
she just wanted love
and a caring husband.
Had children with 2 suitors
Both refused to wed her.

At 24, she met William Condor,
who seemed a gentleman.
He promised to marry her
instead he shot her to death
in the infamous Red Barn
and fled to another city
pretending to her family
that she was with him and well.

Maria’s family got suspicious
when she hadn’t written them
Cordor kept making excuses
for her lack of correspondence
until Maria’s mother saw Maria
in a dream saying she was dead
and her body was in the Red Barn.

Sadly, the dream proved true
and Maria’s body was found,
as was William Condor who
was captured and hung on
the gallows, August 11, 1824.

Bob Boyd

He wasn’t prepared
for the death of his wife.
He thought their love
would last on earth
forever and ever.

He forgot or didn’t
want to face the fact
that love and lovers
die sooner or later
in this fleeting life.

Now he spends his
days crying streams
of salty tears and
having imaginary
heartrending
conversations
with his dead wife

and sends prayers
to the highest heavens
with the tearful hope
he’ll see her again
when he follows her
into the Great Unknown.

Bob Boyd

When the birds stop singing
and the bugs go silent
get the hell out of the woods.

Bob Boyd

Strumming his guitar and
singing through the years
he never lived his big dream
of being a superstar rockstar
paid the dues over and over
did many disagreeable gigs
in beer-stained unsavory bars

They told him he was better
than the singers on the radio
he had more than it takes
to sing hit songs on Billboard
yet he never got the big break
and had no choice but to
squander his promising talent
singing at small parties and
low paying Holiday Inn gigs
to barely make enough money
to pay his rent and his bills.

Bob Boyd

Hurling through the universe in a rocket
with not much room for the living quarters
stuffed in such a small environment
amazing how astronauts can survive
compressed in such a suffocating space
I think many people would be claustrophobic
and fearful of the enormity of infinity
and feel trapped in that speeding projectile
praying everything would work right
instead of an equipment failure
and be lost forever in outer space

Bob Boyd

The sun is about 93 million miles
from the earth,
yet it seems so much closer
when it illuminates the
earth each day.
And for a light source
being so far away,
it sure can make you burn.

Bob Boyd

I watch the wind blowing leaves in a circle.
The leaves look they’re kids having fun
giggling and chasing each other in circles.
Round and round and round they go
like a merry-go-round of whirling leaves
instead of plastic or fiberglass horses.
And I wonder how I missed such marvels
of nature when I was in the work world.

Bob Boyd