The ant scout found the food source
In an old lady’s old-fashioned kitchen,
Some chocolate syrup the old lady spilled
Behind the plastic kitchen trash container.
Excited, the scout left the trail of pheromones
For legions of worker ants to follow
Back to the syrup and was hailed a hero.

Worker ants marshaled their legions in formation
And marched into the old lady’s house,
Salivating at the thought of consuming the syrup.
But the old lady spied the advance columns
And sprayed all the advancing ants to death.
The scout got blamed for the botched mission
And summarily got kicked out of the colony.

In a last chance attempt to regain some glory,
He vowed to get even with the dowdy old lady.
He snuck in her house while she was sleeping
Crawled up her leg and planned to bite her butt
Foolishly believing like a bull elephant shot to death
He could end her large, old life with that single bite.

But he was intercepted by the startled old lady,
Who caught him between her wrinkled fingers
And foiled his misguided, quixotic attempt with
A death squeeze by those trusty old fingers.

Bob Boyd

She often wondered why she couldn’t have been born
Like her neighbor Jenny Lee who had everything,
Beautiful looks, a perfect body and oozing with charm,
Big boned, unattractive, and not acceptable to the in crowd,
She knew she was a better person than Jenny Lee,
But in the world she was born into that didn’t matter
If you didn’t have the superficial look and the right body.
Nobody asked her to dance at high school dances;
She was just another wallflower and she cried about that.
As she matured, she got over her envy and made do
With what nature had given her, and accepted her lot.
She also saw that with advantages come disadvantages,
And she made the best of her life and found happiness.

Bob Boyd

He never understood fans and followers;
Why they felt the need to follow others?
Why the need to fawn over others?
Did they not have enough self-value
To follow themselves and not risk
Being like numberless people,
Merely one of a herd of humans,
Mindlessly less by the need to follow,
Seemingly themselves not enough,
To be their own fans and follow no one?

Bob Boyd

Listened to the old song Luckenbach, Texas
Really resonated with it for the first time.
The things I see in the world today
Make me want to live in a Luckenbach, Texas,
Far away from all the unending nonsense
That I’m bombarded with everyday in the news,
A crazy world going crazier, spinning out of orbit.
Some say Jesus is coming back to fix this mess.

Damn straight super wish he would tout sweet.
But I don’t know if even a Godly intervention
Would fix this hellish, scorched-hot mess.
Some say we’re on the verge of WWIII.
Macht Nichts to me, bring it on.
At least I’d be nuked out of this
Haywired, lopsided screwed up world
But I’d rather go to a Luckenbach, Texas.

Bob Boyd

He said he was having a nervous breakdown.
He needed to get to the emergency room
To be sedated before it became full blown.
I was warned he was a lunatic,
But I had to help him just the same.
On the fast drive to the hospital,
He hopped out of my car at a red light.

I pulled my car over to try to find him
And get him back into my car.
Saw him in a park howling
And hopping up and down.
Ran after him full speed,
But he was faster than me,
And he lost me in a nearby forest.
Nobody ever saw him after that.

Reported him missing to the police,
But twenty long years later
After many searches,
Some with search dogs
And legions of volunteers,
They still haven’t found him.
And I often wonder how a lunatic
Can disappear so completely
And where he could have gone.

Bob Boyd

A wizened sage I met in Sedona, Ca.
Told me I could learn the mysteries of the universe
On the back of a bubble gum wrapper.
A skeptic, I guffawed. He smiled an indulgent smile
And handed me a neatly wrapped piece of
Dubble Bubble Cosmic Gum. I said, this is it?

He smiled and said open it and read it.
I opened it and saw nothing on the back of the wrapper
Until telepathically the words and the wisdom
Lit up my previously unbelieving mind, and I saw it all.

Then the sage told me to eat the gum
I did but after the first chew all the wisdom
Was erased from my mind, and the sage vanished
And I wondered if it had been only a dream.

But when I got back to Greensboro, NC, the
Bubble gum wrapper was still in my pants pocket
I tried to read it but it was just a bubble gum wrapper
With no wisdom left inside of it.
But I saw it all in a dream that night and woke
Up one with the universe, cosmically conscious.

Bob Boyd

Brian was a perfect husband.
Everyone said he was a good catch .
He and Cindy were a perfect pair,
But no one knew the real story.
Brian was controlling and
Physically abusive to Cindy.
When she finally left him,
Brian sent naked photos of her
To her friends, family and employer.
A week later Brian died mysteriously
With a shocked look on his gaping face.
The coroner declared it natural causes.
But Cindy’s witch friend Brianna
Is alleged to have cursed Brian
With a powerful black magic spell.

Bob Boyd

Regular straight arrow,
All around good guy,
Always a smile,
Always a handshake.
Loved by everyone.
Good time Charley
They all called him.
But Charley had
A deep secret.
He Carried a lot of
Guilt inside himself
From a long ago
Incident that nobody
Knew anything about.
He’d been sexually
Abused as a child by
His father a drunk
Who he stabbed to
Death at age eight.
And that horrible
Memory haunted
Him everyday and
Every night, and
He often thought
About killing himself.

Bob Boyd

The longer you live the more people
You see passing through this transient life
But at least it’s always other people and not you
Even when someone close to you passes through
It’s like a close call but it’s still not lucky you
Until you grow older and after a scare or two
You can no longer think it only happens to other people
And the dramatic, sobering realization dawns that
You are going to be one of those other people too

Bob Boyd

Checking out at Sav-A-Lot
Saw a cylinder pendant
Around the casher’s neck
Asked about it out of curiosity
She said it held the ashes
Of her dead daughter
Said I was sorry that
Her daughter had died
She said it’s okay
She is in heaven

Bob Boyd

No
Education
No
Employment
No
Future
No
Money
No
Looks
No
Friends

Antisocial
Lost girls
Sad and
Shameful
Social
Problem
In
Indifferent
China

Bob Boyd

Mind firing on five cylinders
Gone are the six cylinders days
Heart firing on three cylinders
Holding its own despite failure
To maintain optimal function
But he has an aged induced
Zen attitude about declines
Sees death as an ultimate
Awakening into a better life

Bob Boyd

I listen to birds outside my bathroom window,
A symphony of songs, such auditory delights.
Out of nowhere the cicadas chime in harmoniously,
Sweet summer, natural music played in the trees.
I’m enjoying it as much as any human made songs,
With all the technology and fine tuned instruments.
Today no match for nature’s incredible performance.

Bob Boyd

It’s not my fault my parents named me Karen,
But when I tell people my name they giggle
And wonder if I’ll make some crazy scene.
It’s like I’m branded with the insaneness
Of all those unhinged women they see
On YouTube and in mocking news reports.
To the person who started that Karen crap,
Kiss my butt for that unfair stigma on me.

Bob Boyd

Flotsam on the sea of life,
No matter how important
People think they are.
Eventually in the end
Memories of their lives
No more significant than
Driftwood forgotten and
forever gone, swallowed
In the high seas of history.

Bob Boyd

Mean people all over the Internet.
Some writing vile racist remarks.
Some telling others to kill themselves.
At least the Internet smoked them out
As heartless jerks with no humanity.
It would be a fitting and just afterlife for them
If they were eternally harassed with their
Own meanness by demons meaner than them;
That is, If demons could be meaner than them.

Bob Boyd

Supersized, buzzing swarm of dragonflies invaded a beach,
Overhead and on the beach between chairs and under umbrellas
In Rhode Island. Kids screaming, some swatted them, people leaving.
Was it some kind of dragonfly plague unleashed by the Almighty
As a warning to cease higher than acceptable levels of sin?
Or did Beezlebug decide to be Lord of Dragonflies instead of flies
In a grandstanding demonstration of his evil, earthly powers?
If not, what in hell brought all those dragonflies to that beach?
Maybe like the humans there, they just wanted to catch some rays.

Bob Boyd

Fish swimming in big and small aquariums
In streams, brooks, ponds, lakes, seas
And oceans and other places.
Many dying everyday all over the world
Just as many humans are.
Supposedly humans have an afterlife,
But no mention of one for fish.
Do fish just die into oblivion
With no Jesus, Buddha or Mohannad, etc
For them when their days are done?
Or did the Ruler of Time and Space
Create a post life place for them,
Such as an afterlife ocean of bliss
Where big fish and little fish live together
In heavenly harmony without the
Big fish eating the little fish to survive.

Bob Boyd

She came into his life
During his loneliest days
Love bombed him incessantly
Charmed him unceasingly
He became like her slave
Talked him into killing an ex
Said ex had abused her
And was an ongoing threat
Outraged he stabbed the
Ex thirty times to death
The police caught him
He left too many clues
He refused to implicate her
And did life in prison while
She never served a day
She said he was still her love
Until she found someone else
Rejected he went to pieces
Realized he had been duped
And hung himself in his cell

Bob Boyd

Decided to rampage men for
Crimes against everyday women
That the courts failed to punish
Took out Bill Dooley last night
Two bullets to his head for
The woman he raped repeatedly
Next came John Scrubbs
Shoved him in front of an
Oncoming subway in NY
For molesting a little girl
Quietly strangled a high ranking
Politician for raping young intern
Melted away after that to turn
Down the heat and to wait for
A few months to rampage again
In another city with three
Deserving targets lined up

Bob Boyd