The Birdman of Stirling Castle

In the Autumn of 1507 in Stirling, Scotland
an Italian-born abbot, John Damian de Falcuis
Studied birds in flight and believed he could fly.
He fashioned the feathers of eagles into wings
He wore on his arms. Clad in the makeshift
Flying machine, he leaped off Stirling Castle.
For a moment, he hovered in the sky
As if, like a bird he really could fly;
Then plummeted seventy feet to
The unwelcoming ground. Miraculously,
he survived, woke up in a doctor’s urgent care,
Many injuries and a shattered thigh bone.
He never could walk properly after that
And he stayed out of the sky.

Bob Boyd

Forgotten

Clouds wandered in azure skies
Rivers poured through towns and glens
Flowers swayed in windswept fields
Deer and elk frolicked in fall forests
But in a time forgotten cemetery
Hidden among quiet oak trees
Defaced and abandoned
Not a soul stirred

Bob Boyd

Imagine if You Were Born to be Fish Food

Imagine if you were born fated to be fish food. Imagine knowing your demise was only a purchase away. And since you couldn’t go to church and no proselytizers would be knocking on the door of your plastic container to save your soul, you wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hades of getting to heaven.
You’d probably be hoping that death was a Hindu thing where you could come back at a higher birth.
Maybe living the good life as one of the privileged, high born fish who ate the fish food. If your karma had been even better, maybe you’d come back living the dream as one of the customers buying the fish food.

Bob Boyd

Thailand’s Sak Yant Tattoo Festival

An hour west of Bangkok
Sak Yant animal spirit tattoos
Administered by Buddhist Monks.
Tranced devotees run like crazed animals,
Growling and gesturing, newborn beasts
Through crowds of thousands upon thousands
To the front of the astonished crowds
Captured, restrained by handlers
Stabilized by the Buddhist monks.
Is it as claimed the cleansing of Karma
Manifesting as spirit animals
Or crazed imaginations run wild?
Whatever the reason, it’s a bizarre sight.
You will never forget once you’ve seen it.

Bob Boyd

Two Summers and a Fairy Tale

I knew you for two summers, met you at a teenage dance.
We danced to the song Sixteen Candles, and with each step
We became more enamored, knew we’d be a couple.
Teenagers we fell in love, planned to marry when older,
Vowed we’d be together forever, prince and princess, the fairy tale.
I loved you so much it was like I was living in a heavenly dream 24/7.
But when when the two summers became chilled by ill-fated fall winds,
You were untrue, and the heavenly dream became a heartbreaking reality.
The sun hid its tears behind darkening clouds.
The moon turned blue in the dismal night.
And I, heart-wounded prince, whose vow of love ever true
Couldn’t believe the princess killed the fairy tale,
And I could no longer be with you.

Bob Boyd

Four Young Girls from Birmingham

September 15, 1963 bombed to death in the 16th Street Baptist Church In Birmingham:
Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14) Carol Denise McNair (11).
I’ve seen their photos, read their stories – long ago,
Bright futures awaited those innocent, young girls.
Reading about them, tears fell. It was all so heartbreakingly sad.
Soulless monsters, the killers didn’t seem to care;
They didn’t seem contrite and ashamed, as they should have been.
Wondered how God could have let that happen, and in the sanctity of a church.
The only way I can reconcile their awful, unjust fates
Is that surely God must have needed four more angels in heaven.
Never forget those four young girls from Birmingham.

Bob Boyd

The Wooing of an Inscrutable Woman

What is it going to take to woo this inscrutable woman?
Am I going to have to crawl over a hundred miles of broken glass?
Or swim the seven seas seventeen times?
Or like a gladiator of old, fight off hundreds of lions in a coliseum?
Or scale Mount Everest ten thousand times?
Good God in heaven, what on earth is it going to take?
In an attempt to make her favor sweeter,
I think I’ll start with some chocolate mousse from Harris Teeter.

Bob Boyd

8th Century Chinese Poetry

I love 8th century Chinese poetry.
I even like their poets’ names like Li Po and Wang Wei.
They sound so cool and so exotic to me.
Those poets liked things like jade — in abundance;
They seemed to like it more than we like gold.
They liked oriole birds, and if you see one, you’ll know why
And there are eight species in the US and in Canada.
They loved the word crystalline, as in crystalline water.
In many ways their poetry is close to peerless,
Their use of imagery is phenomenal and sublime.
All of this amazes me because it was written so long ago.
And by that way, I’m not talking reading these poems
In Chinese. I know nothing of Mandarin, and I can’t
Speak Cantonese. Nor any of the hundreds of
dialects that are considered Chinese.

Bob Boyd

Coming and Going

Some come into this world suffering
all manner of medical conditions
out of the womb.

Most go out of this world suffering
dementia, cancers, other medical
conditions into the grave.

Why all this suffering? Where’s the love?
I swear by heaven above, if I were in
charge of the here and now, the

comings and goings, nobody
would ever suffer on the way in
or the way out.

Bob Boyd

Luckless, loveless Old Man Lament

As a luckless old man ten unsteady steps away being in the obits,
I’ve given up on the ship I’ve waited for all my life to come in.
I think it’s docked forever in Singapore or at the bottom of the Bering Straits.
The only ships I see are those that always pass me in the night.
I sit here marooned in a beggar broke, loveless unshipworthy life.
Almost won the lottery, 10 million, but somehow the ticket got lost.
Had what I thought was the love of my life, Daisy Bobby Sue Mae,
Didn’t know she was half crazy and crazier about the monied life.
She left me when she somehow got flush with cash and bought
a BMW, designer clothes, diamond rings and a fancy pants gigolo.
I know what you’re thinking.

Bob Boyd

A Tangled Life

He lead a tangled life,
A miscreant in high school,
A troublemaker in the military,
A criminal back in the real world.
Then as an incarcerated outcast
Had an epiphany in solitary that
Untangled his tangled life.
Saw he was the architect
Of his destructive behaviors.
Reformed and rebuilt himself
Into a better benevolent man.
His troubled life vanished
like dark clouds after a storm.
Spent the rest of his days
In compassionate service to others.

Bob Boyd

error: Content is protected !!