Bob Boyd's Free Verse Poems

Boyfriend and girlfriend
A quiet night enjoying seafood
Eating delicious raw oysters
Boyfriend wakes up sick
Learns girlfriend is dead
Vibrio Vulnificus the killer
Virus that enters seafood
When raw or undercooked
The grim reaper a cruel fiend
Can strike many so randomly
And break a thousand hearts

Bob Boyd

Three-year-old twins dead today in LA,
Cute little boys named Jestine and josiah,
Alleged from drugs laced with fentanyl.
Mother seemed caring in photos of her and them;
Now facing charges of child abuse and murder.
Such a heartbreaking loss for those concerned,
News story uncertain if by negligence or design.
And why do things like this have to happen
To innocents on this often troubled planet?

Bob Boyd

His country had become fragmented
Vandals getting away with tearing up cities
Miscreants setting buildings on fire
And hurling objects at the police
The government mostly looking the other way
Criminals favored over heroic police
Fools crying for a defunding of them
Yet calling them crying when crime visited them
Other hypocrites backing defunding had their own security
District attorneys so soft on crime citizens in peril

His country’s borders unprotected
Hundreds of thousands of illegals pouring in
Administration breaking the law by letting them in
Murderers and rapists and terrorists in the mix
Illegal votes more important than citizen safety
Sex traffickers coming over the border
An American dream and big bucks for them
Tons of Fentanyl pouring in too addicting many
Illegal votes more important than them too
God save his fragmented screwed up country

Bob Boyd

She told him she was totally legal,
Older than she looked, really 18.
He didn’t want to believe otherwise,
Beautiful and built as well as she was.
They commenced their play in his car
And met many times after that.
He felt he found the love of his life
Until he learned she wasn’t legal.
Their relationship lasted a mere month.
She sought revenge when he left her,
A $5,000 fine and 2 to 20 years in jail.

Bob Boyd

Scorching torrid summer days,
Heat beating down unmercifully.
Air conditioners and fans struggling
Against the omnipresent, malignant rays.
Sweat pouring off humans and animals.
Heat dehydrating many older humans.
Animals survive, some old humans die.
Heard a song that said don’t let the sun
Catch you crying. Don’t let the sun burn
You to death either, and stay out of it.

Bob Boyd

Miss Mary was quite contrary
After she accidentally stepped on a spider
Scooped up its remains, buried it in her backyard
A tiny sign over its makeshift grave read Fred
Her sister visiting her, killed a fly on Mary’s screen door
Mary slapped her sister’s face and kicked her out of her house
She scrapped the fly off the screen and buried it next to Fred
A tiny sign over its makeshift grave read Susan
About three feet away Mary had another grave
Grass had grown over it and she had no sign above it
Her ex dead husband Larry she murdered in 1972

Bob Boyd

Victor was joy riding down Elm Street in Greensboro, NC.
A quiet, old Mexican man pulled in front of him by mistake.
Victor cut him off, pulled out his handgun and threatened him.
The quiet, old Mexican didn’t understand English but
Apologized in Spanish and drove away without a scene.
Victor, not too bright, thought the gentlemen insulted him.
Road raged, raced after him to pistol whip him for his slight.
The quiet, old Mexican man, a great, powerful Shaman,
Waved his hand and Victor and his car vanished.
Victor woke up in his car in a Harris Teeter parking lot
On Pisgah Church Road wondering if it was all a dream.

Bob Boyd

The act lasted for many years
The ventriloquist and the dummy
They had gigs coast to coast
Some in Europe and Canada
The dummy seemed as real as him
People swore it moved like a human
When the ventriloquist got old
And too feeble to do the show
The dummy began talking
Though the ventriloquist.

Bob Boyd

He led a lurid criminal life
Got away with many robberies
Lived a high life, many women
More robberies, more money
Never getting caught
Too smart for the police
Taunted them with letters
Boasting about his robberies
Got too brazen and overconfident
Caught and sentenced
Ten years in prison
Read about the Buddha there
Did his time in meditation
Released early, good behavior
Cut off all his golden locks
Made an ultimate vow
Became a Buddhist Monk
Somewhere in Tibet
Never heard of again
Attained Nirvana

Bob Boyd

He loved illegal drag racing
The high speed adrenal rushes
The risks of getting caught by the cops
The admiration of the teenage girls
Drove like an Indy 500 driver
Never lost a single street race
Never got caught by the cops
Ten years later too old for drag racing
Became a highway patrol officer
Raced to catch those illegal drag racers

Bob Boyd

Blizzard howls and rages
Snow flies and falls
Across the sprawling city
Electric power ceases
Driving cars impossible
Snow plows overwhelmed
Everybody stays inside
Day breaks world anew
Sun warms the cold air
Iced tree limbs sagging
Icicles dripping water
People waking up
Snow shovels digging
Nature and people
Adapting to the arrival
Of a reborn winter

Bob Boyd

Established in 1939 by the Nazis
Radical eugenic measure
Restoration of the pure Aryan race
Elimination of those “unworthy of life”
Psychiatric, neurological, physical disabilities
Genetic and financial burden on the country
Killing of disabled children the purpose
Murdered by medical overdoses and starvation
Up to 10,000 under age 17 the final count
Philipp Bouhler, Director of Hilters Chancellery
Karl Brandt, Hitler’s Attending Physician
Architects of the heartless, horrific slaughter
I’m hoping a punishing hell awaited them

Bob Boyd

The first time I saw you, far from my home in Massachusetts
You were at the Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Encouraged by my high school friends, I’d gone there with them.
I remember how you walked by and gave me that brief look.
I thought you had such a beautiful face and the prettiest blue eyes,
And gorgeous, brown hair hanging beneath your shoulders.
Inwardly I gasped so affected by the way you looked at me,
And I watched you stroll away with a group of girlfriends.
But I was only in New Orleans for that one holiday night.
And you were a never come true dream that passed by me.
But on the long ride home I couldn’t stop thinking about you,
And like that old cliche, what might have been had I met you.
After a few weeks passed, I stopped thinking about you
Until my first day at the University of Massachusetts in Boston,
That miraculous moment in my Comparative Literature class
When you were in the seat next to me and you remembered me.
And you’ve been beside me ever since going on 20 years.

Bob Boyd

He put his life on the line for his country,
An honorable and patriotic young man.
Saw many other honorable patriots die,
Did things to other humans he never
Would have done in times of peace.
Couldn’t keep track of how many
He killed from afar and hand to hand,
Lost count after over two hundred.
Remembered some of their dying faces
As death closed their eyes forever.

Witnessed dishonorable soldiers,
Comrades in the American army ,
Supposedly always good guys,
Rape and kill women in small village,
Shoot their men and children to death.
Couldn’t get the wicked My Lai massacre
Out of his head. Returned to the states
With PTSD, Agent Orange, and many
Nightmares about that massacre, and
All the human lives he had taken.

Began to reason why when it was
Do or die orders by a government
That a Secretary of Defense confessed
It was all a “terribly wrong mistake.”
Then he had a sobering realization:
Pawns on both sides of the war had
Died in vain for that terrible mistake,
And that everybody lost in wars.
He threw away his many medals and
Became a pacifist for peace.

Bob Boyd

Family too poor to send her to college;
She never nurtured that dream anyway.
Aced her high school classes, didn’t buy
That everybody had to go to college or
Risk becoming a nobody in their lives.
She started her own small business,
Cleaned rich peoples’ fancy houses,
Took self enrichment college course
Part time nights for personal interest.
Aced all of them like in high school.
Small business became giant business,
Paid her more than most college grads,
In debt for years because of college loans,
Would ever make in their lifetimes

Bob Boyd