He was seventeen
handsome as a movie star

had a near supernatural
ability at playing pool

he could run racks
for hours without missing

and I never saw him lose
even when he played

the expert pool playing
old timers

he also had tons of charisma
and seemed a born winner in life

but an auto accident ended all of that
before he reached age eighteen

but maybe he won at living too
and got to a glorious existence

sooner than most of us

Bob Boyd

This is a true poem. The young pool shark was as I described, and I couldn’t believe his life ended so soon.

Decades later, with a lot of knowledge about near death experiences, I believe for most the afterlife is as many NDEers describe it: Incomparable, unconditional love, more real than this existence, and our true home that once experienced you want to spend forever there.

I believe those that are not the most, like a Hitler, go to a lower plane of existence and do a sort of penance there but eventually ascend the planes like climbing up the rungs of a ladder and reach what the NDEers call Source, the incomparable unconditional love etc cetera.

“Look forward to your transition, it’s the first time you will experience unconditional love.”

Elizabeth Kubler Ross

and I hope you are somewhere
heavenly

in the afterlife

I hope you are peaceful and
happy there

without a care

if there’s romantic love
on the other side

I hope you found it there

Bob Boyd

This is a brief poem about an ex-wife who died in her early fifties about twenty years after we got divorced. She was a smoker, and I fear her early death was related to that, but I don’t know for sure.

She was probably the nicest woman I’d ever been involved with, but I am an introvert and cerebral. She was an extrovert and, though intelligent, not interested in deeper ponderings as I am.

The everwidening gulf between us happened because she had gotten a new job and met many new girlfriends and began hanging out with them so much that I was home alone too much.
And, for me, the marriage became more and more lonely together, which eventually led to a separation and a divorce.

But that aside, I was sad to read in her online obituary that she had died a few years after her death. I had just done an Internet search to see if I could find her, never expecting she had died.

Bob Boyd

are not about monsters

crazed ex-girlfriend

demons or night hags

or being in hell

they are about working again

I have been retired going on 3
years now

and

to have a dream where I’m
working on a job again

is like a nightmare to me
maybe because it’s like

losing the freedom of not
having to work any more

that I have and cherish

Bob Boyd

It surprises me that I feel that way when I wake up from those dreams. When I worked, I was extremely driven and never wanted to retire. Initially I had planned to work till I couldn’t work any more because of an infirmity, my mind too dulled by age, or by death. Yet, once I was retired I enjoyed the freedom of not being under anyone’s control – no bosses over me – that I knew I could never work again. Now I work for myself writing poems everyday as a hobby. And I kinda feel like I did in my twenties, free and happy.

A man named John Rhodes
aka CriptoHunter

claims there are creatures

he calls reptoids

He says they have

scaled skin
slightly large craniums
two slits or almond shaped eyes
ears like small holes
flat wide nose
lipless mouths
muscular bodies
4 to 6 digits on each scaled hands
some with tails
some with no tails
heights from 5 ½ to 9 feet

If real, they don’t seem hostile
more like ET than klingons

but terrestrial instead
of extraterrestrial

It’s all quite fascinating
and either good sci fi
or incredibly real
You can read more about it
at The Reptoids Research Center

Bob Boyd

I heard of reptoids while listening to Coast to Coast this morning, and found John Rhodes quite likable, seemingly extremely knowledge about all things paranormal, and he seemed legit. But I have a hard time believing in reptoids. However, real or unreal, true or false, I find this fun and fascinating.

A guy I used to work with
said he only
slept with prostitutes

he had no use for
having a relationship with
a woman he could
have real love with

I found his choice
surprising and empty

and asked him why
he didn’t choose to be
with a woman

he could have a romantic
relationship with

like I looked for and most
men desired and searched for

he said, “You get the drama.
I get the sex without it, and
overall I pay less for it.”

I could see his point and
thought about the benefit
of the no drama

but, hell, I couldn’t see the
empty sex without love.

Bob Boyd

I actually knew a guy I worked with who was like this. He just wanted sex without any commitments and, as he said, without the drama. Though I could somewhat see his point, it seemed like an empty life with empty sex and never the joys of romantic love. But, alas, sometimes with romantic there is a lot of drama and sometimes there is a broken heart. His heart, far as I can see, would never be broken — unless he fell in love with a prostitute who rejected his love.

They seemed like
normal young men,
the Benton brothers

church going, charitable,
and affable

they fooled everyone
when it was discovered

they earned their living
secretly

digging up the dead
illegally obtaining
cadavers

for doctors and
medical schools
in the 1800s

but after 10 years
their employment
ended

when the father
of a deceased daughter
whose body they dug up
and sold to a medical
college

shot them both dead

Bob Boyd

This poem is fictional. As I was thinking about which way it would turn out, it occurred to me that a relative of one of the people whose body the grave robbers had desecrated, could seek lethal revenge.

I had struggled to find an apartment
to rent in a city during the start
of a college season

After a frustrating and
relentless search with
few available apartments

I finally found one that
I rented from two lovely women
who were lesbians

when my ex saw the apartment
it wasn’t good enough for her
and she didn’t like the idea
of renting from lesbians

she left pissed off and went
back to live with her parents

I called her twice to try to
work things out

but each time her mother
claimed she wasn’t home

I said to her mother, “well
I guess that’s that,” and
that was the end of a
quarrelsome relationship.

Bob Boyd

This is based on a true story. It shows how a single flare up sometimes can end a relationship, especially when the man had tried his utmost to find an apartment at a time when apartments were scarce only to have his girlfriend make a scene about it. Worse, for three days she refused to answer his calls until, exasperated and angry, he said, screw it, and the relationship was over.

I knew it was risky
getting involved with her

but damn! she was so hot
I couldn’t help myself

I should have been more
circumspect

I should have been far
wiser

and I paid a high price
for my indiscretion

my wallet and my
beloved red Volkswagen convertible –

stolen

Bob Boyd

This is a Fiction piece, but such things happen in this unpredictable world, and many have gotten seduced by beauty and burned by it. Worse, people can’t always see what they are getting into in the throes of first loves or infatuations. The absolute worst is when this happens to a woman with a charmer who turns out to be an abuser.

Jennifer was a Wiccan
I was a believer in Christ
but somehow we
made our love work

we met in the middle
of a crossroad
of mutual respect
and love

until an evil warlock
used his dark arts
to steal Jennifer
away from me

and though I prayed
hundreds of prayers
petitioned scores
of saints

sought the powers of
white magic wiccans
exorcists and healers

I never got Jennifer back

Bob Boyd

Another fiction piece that started as a kernel of an idea and blossomed into a story with an unhappy ending, and the good guy left hanging unable to get his love back. It reminded me of cases where a nice girl leaves a good guy for a bad boy, sometimes with no end of suffering for her, and the nice guy vowing to treat women like shit instead of like the nice guy he is. And probably won’t be able to be an SOB to a woman ever.

I had a job once hauling building
foundation forms

I liked the exercise
but it wasn’t the right job for me

I worked some construction too
but that was a worse fit

the worse fit of all was stocking
shelves in a grocery store

too mindlessly repetitive for me
found zero satisfaction it in

worked once part time as an
office building cleaner

wasn’t the right fit for me
either but I liked the work

the best fit for me
that took fifty years to find out

was working helping others

Bob Boyd

This poem is about my struggles to find a job that was the right fit for me, and sometimes, perhaps often, getting stop gap jobs until I found the right fit. I didn’t find that right fit until age 50. I was working in retail jewelry and came to a crossroads where I felt compelled to find a job where I could make a difference in this world by helping people for a living.

With no experience or education in Human Services, I got a state job as a Veteran’s Rep that I later parlayed into a job with a nonprofit helping the elderly for a living. And that was the perfect fit, which I worked at for over 20 years until I retired.

The sex was wonderful
he couldn’t get enough
of it

she couldn’t either
but it wasn’t sufficient

to keep their marriage
and them together

she had become
an incurable extrovert

had to be out with her
girlfriends nearly every night

leaving him alone at home
lonelier and lonelier

until despite the great sex
and the once good times
he had to leave her

but decades later
once in a while he remembers

how good the lovemaking was
and how great their love was

until she became
so much of an extrovert
that she neglected him
night after night

and wanted him back
when he left her
forever

Bob Boyd

I’m sure this is a common tale that many others have experienced. Despite when the bloom is on the rose and everything is heavenly, and the sex is mind-blowing, when things start to go south even the best sex in the world is not the glue that holds a ill fated relationship together.

Mikey ignored the rumors
that the old lady

who lived in the
old Gothic house
secluded on the
edge of a forest

was a witch

though he had
to admit

she looked like one

his friends dared him
to throw a rock
though one of

the windows in her house

not one to chicken out
he snuck up on
the old lady’s house

in the dark of night
when all the lights
were out in her house

and he heaved a rock
through a second floor
window
and sprinted away
so he wouldn’t
get caught

but that night in
his bed
he saw and heard
the old lady

cackling like a witch
in a nightmare …

right before his body
exploded in flames

and smoldering burnt ashes
were
his only remains

Bob Boyd

Sometimes I like writing dark poems. I loved horror movies when I was far younger. But I didn’t like the slasher movies or the gore-fests. Hammer Films was my favorite with real stories that had a lot of substance and good scares. I rarely watch movies nowadays, but I like writing horror-like poems sometimes. Sometimes with humor or absurdities in them.

He grew older
and older
and kept
wrinkling away

lost his muscle mass
his youthful strength
his stallion virility

in his muscled up youth
he never
believed he’d get
weak and scrawny
one day

but at least he
kept working out

without the pump
without the gains

he had in his muscular
younger years

he resigned himself
to the muscle
and strength losses

by knowing soon
he’d die
and believing
in the afterlife

he’d be strong
and muscled up
again

Bob Boyd

This is all me. Man, how I hate how age has reduced the muscle mass that I used to have. I wasn’t bodybuilder muscled up being an ectomorph. But I had decent muscles for my body frame without resorting to chemicals. And I didn’t wear clothes to try accentuate my modest muscularity compared to that of the mesomorphs.

And as a slender guy in regular clothes it wasn’t obvious I worked out. Now as an old man who still works out but with bands and dumbbells for curls, I don’t look like I ever worked out, lol. But, despite age reducing my muscles and me making no gains anymore, I still benefit immensely from working out and feel more alive and mellowed out.

he thinks or says things
like wow
nice legs

holy moly she’s
so hot

and I wonder if
the female bettle

has beauty enhancements
like perfumes and
lipsticks

or if unlike human
females

she’s born with those
enhancements installed

and has no need to
improve upon her
natural beauty

Bob Boyd

I’m kidding around here. I write poems about many things, even insects sometimes. And I lie giving insects human like behaviors in some of my poems about them. For example:

Stink Bug on My Computer

A stink bug just flew on my computer screen.
though they’re grotesque looking, I like them.
but I must admit the first time I saw one
It looked so bizarre it startled me,
wondering if it was harmful and would sting or bite.

Rarely had I seen a weirder looking bug.
It had kind of a threatening don’t touch me look.
We don’t have them where I’m originally from,
just outside of Boston, MA in the milder burbs.

Despite not knowing if it was harmful,
I couldn’t kill it, just coaxed it onto a tissue
and walked it outside my apartment
into the freedom of a warm summer’s night.

After I learned stink bugs were harmless,
I grew to like them, as I like the one
that just soared off my computer, tiny wings flapping,
airborne for a few seconds in lamp lit skies,
and it landed on a runway somewhere behind me.
In a little while he might land on me.

Maybe he’ll sit on my shoulder like a best pal
and watch YouTube videos with me and listen to 30s music
and tearfully tell me how he can’t meet any female stink bugs online.
I’ll say I feel your pain, been there with female women. Never going back.

Maybe after he pours out his love life miseries
and cries for a while on my supportive shoulder,
I’ll tell him he’s a handsome enough stink bug
to find a decent and beautiful female stink bug
who will be his true love and treat him like a prince among stink bugs.

And maybe I’ll adopt him as an exotic pet.
I wouldn’t tether him to a restraining leash
or stick him in a four-sided oppressive aquarium,
or imprison him in a soul crushing, miniature cage;
that is if stink bugs have souls, which I imagine they do.

But mercy me I don’t know what I’d feed him,
and I doubt I’d find stink bug food at PetSmart.
I could probably find him some food on Amazon,
hopefully with a five gold stars rating
and next day shipping between 4 and 8 am.

I hate that it has such an undignified, unfitting name.
I would have jazzed the name up with some Latin,
like Incredibilis Insectum or maybe something more relatable
like Super Cool Bug or Bug That Only Stinks If You Mess With It.

And by the way, stink bugs only stink If you
harm or try to crush them to death,
as if harmed or dead they get the final say.

Bob Boyd

Some people aren’t happy
unless they’re making
trouble for others

they’re psychology has
to be terminally
screwed up

they seem to confuse
being happy with

being unhappy

piling woe upon woe
upon themselves

but mostly on others

and God forbid if ever
you get tangled up

with one of them

pray you can get out of
their sticky webs

before you can dragged
into more

trouble and sorrows
than you ever

could have imagined.

Bob Boyd

This poem is about people who have annoyed the hell out of me and others. People who seem to live and breathe to make trouble, as if that were the sole purpose of their lives.

I even saw/experience this with an elderly couple me and my agency tried to help. No matter how hard you tried to help them it was never appreciated, and they always were trouble with every agency they sought help from. And they badmouthed all the agencies that tried to help them.

My thinking for them was even if you’re a miserable, mean and trouble-making, SOB, at least fake being halfway decent when you come to an agency seeking help.