Bob Boyd's Free Verse Poems

He felt heartless like the Tin Man
and so unloved all his life,
unwanted by his mother
Stuck in foster care.
Taken in for the money
social services paid his
Unloving foster parents.
Never knew he had a heart,
never knew he could love,
until he grew up and
met her and she took
him into her heart.
And for the first time
in his loveless life
he learned he wasn’t a Tin Man
and that he had a heart.

Bob Boyd

Everybody I used to know is dying
Old friends, old actors, and singers
Never thought age would catch up
With my young sixties generation
When we were living large forever
Time snuck by without me seeing it
Suddenly my generation was old
Our expiration dates running out
Somehow I’ve survived so far
Even a cancer couldn’t kill me
Heart failure silently trying
To end my life any day now
But it’s not having much luck
Maybe Death wants to torture me
With a mind numbing dementia
Before it takes my waning life

Bob Boyd

It’s been like bad weather without you.
My days and nights are cold and overcast.
My emotions are reeling like a tsunami.
My heart is frozen in a frigid winter.
I need a little sunshine in my lonely life
To thaw out this heartbreak from
The stormy day you left me.
A new lady has got my attention
Maybe she’ll bring some
Sunny days back into my life.

Bob Boyd

Twenty-five and she’s diagnosed with cancer,
Just when she just found a new boyfriend.
How unkind of her fate to put that on her
Now the fear of death is in the back of her mind;
She tries to forget it, but she cannot.
It’s like its coming for her to take her out
Long before her precious time.
She worries she’ll lose her new boyfriend
To death or he’ll find a healthier woman.
But her prognosis is good and she’s doing better
In a year of treatments the cancer will be gone
And she’ll resume her life as a new wife.

Bob Boyd

The spinning sun warmed the
Awakening earth
The spinning moon cooled it down
The planets keep spinning
In the glorious heavens
The stars kept spinning
In the dark night skies
He marveled at it all
As his life kept spinning away
Like a spinning top
And he wondered when
It was all going to stop.

Bob Boyd

He used to envy his friend Mike
Who had a 40 year marriage
To his high school sweetheart
He’d only had failed marriages
With three women before
He gave up and decided to
Go it alone in life alone
without the comforts and
benefits of a loving woman.

But when Mike’s wife Cindy
Died and Mike fell apart
And became terminally
Heartbroken and sick
He realized love doesn’t last
And felt vindicated in staying
Solo and free of the painful
Illusion of lasting love.

Bob Boyd

The preacher on the radio is shouting at him,
Says he’s going to hell if he doesn’t
Change his evil, sinning ways.
He’s not hearing it.
He likes the tasty forbidden fruit
Of sleeping with many lustful women,
And doesn’t want to give his fornications up.
From what the preacher says about heaven
He thinks he’d have more fun in hell.
Besides he likes hot weather and hot women
And devilish friends compared to
The goody goody meek Christian men
He shuts the preacher off the radio
Ironically tells him to go to hell
And gets back to so-called sinning
With a devilishly hot promiscuous woman.

Bob Boyd

It started out incredibly well,
One of those loves at first sight.
Perfect for each other,
They got engaged 3 months
After they met at a coffee house.
A year later they married,
So much in love,
In love forever
They said.

Two years and two kids later
She began spending more time
With friends from work than
With increasingly lonely him.
He had arguments with her
About her constant absence
For a while she’d stay home
And spend more time with him
But would return to her
Away from him ways.
And he’d think to himself,
I never thought love
Could be so lonely.

Bob Boyd

He was aimlessly wandering through life
Feeling lonely and unloved without a woman.
He often dreamed of how it could be
With a woman by his side to love and support him.
Then Maryann, a beautiful high school teacher,
Came into his life like the morning light.
They fell in love and everything was so right.
They got married and had two sweet girls.
His life with her was like an eternal paradise
Until one day while at work he got the bad news
That Maryann had cheated on him with
One of her students and been arrested.
So upset by the news, he threw up,
Got outraged and filed for a divorce,
And his paradise became a living hell.

Bob Boyd

Full of unbounded energy
Bursting with eternal youth
Blessed with all the right stuff
Nothing can stop him
He’s a winner all the way
He can achieve anything
He’s the Lord of his universe
Working part time as a waiter
Until he achieves his dream
As the greatest actor ever
And he knows he will
He knows a Hollywood agent
Will clearly recognize his
Greatest of all acting talent
Discover him and sign him
For a million dollar contract
And he’ll own Hollywood
And grace the movies
Like no actor ever has

Bob Boyd

Medieval music playing in the background
Of his unkempt one bedroom apartment.
The music taking him back in his imagination
To times of knights, ladies and dragons.
He imagines saving a princess from a dragon
In a poorly fortified, ancient castle.
Right before he vanquishes the dragon,
He wakes from the Medieval reverie
Knowing he’s just been like a
Don Quixote fighting windmills
In his overly imaginative mind.

Bob Boyd

He started lucid dreaming.
To try to meet the woman of his dreams
In a lucid romantic dream.
After months of trying,
He finally met his dreamt up match,
Blonde and ethereally beautiful
Perfect in all ways for him.
He flirted with her in dreams
For three wonderful months.
He fell in love with her
And her with him.
But when they consummated,
She turned into a terrifying demon
And stole his mortal soul,
And burned his body to death.
When the police found his burned remains
They reported his death
As a case of spontaneous combustion.

Bob Boyd

He hated clowns and didn’t trust them.
Hiding behind ridiculous costumes
And weirdly painted faces
They looked sinister
And untrustworthy to him.
He felt his belief was validated
When one turned out to be a serial killer
With the first name of a great American actor,
That was an injustice to that actor’s famous name.
John Wayne was the clown’s first name. Gacy his last.
A clown at children’s parties. A serial killer
Who killed at least 33 men and children.

Bob Boyd

He thought she was like a saint
After he saw her playing saintly parts
In many great movies.

But when he saw her on two talk shows
And she was drunk and mean
He couldn’t believe how she acted.

He learned a lesson about how
Actor’s personas on silver screens
Are often counterfeit representations
Of less than perfect people.

Bob Boyd

Her days and nights pass faster
She grows older and older
Her body’s breaking down
The ravages of aging
She sees more doctors
Than ever in her life
And she’s tired of all of it

She misses the good health
And good times of her youth
But those days are gone forever
So she takes her ten medications
And deals with her inevitable
Death with a smile and a sigh
Turns out her bedroom lights
And escapes it all in sleep

Bob Boyd