So easily led
So easily persuaded
It doesn’t matter
How intelligent they are
Many are still so easily led
They lose their empathy
They cheer when
Innocent others are killed
They become monsters
So easily led

Bob Boyd

Some believe dark forces run wild in the world,
that we are constantly and subtly influenced by them,
that many are at their mercy and need to be
on guard with fervent prayers and religion.
I don’t believe the diabolical and dark forces are
at the helm of all the evil in this world.
I believe genetic, psychological, and social factors
are at the core of all the crimes and criminals.
But if you choose to believe in the dark forces and
the diabolical, you may just make them real in your mind
and suffer unrelenting worries and needless fears.

Bob Boyd

One a doctor. One a lawyer. One a criminal.
What went wrong with the one that went bad?
Were the seeds for going wrong in all of them,
but two were more resistant to the temptations?
Was the one that went bad the weaker strain?
Or was there a slight deviation in the bad one’s genes
that irresistibly compelled him to crime?
Or is it an ingrained mental health problem?
It’s a curious matter when in a good family two go right
and one goes wrong.

Bob Boyd

Brought up lower class
A family that barely got by
She lacked the advantages
The material goods,
The private schools,
The privileges
The importance
Of the higher classes
Upon graduating from
High School with average grades
She went to work in a can factory
Married and bore three children
Had an ups and down life
But it was a good life
Harming no one
Doing her best
Trying to always be kind
Having higher morals than most
Maintaining a loving marriage
Raising children lovingly

I say in the greater scheme of things
Her life was just as significant as yours
Whether you are richer than her
Or deemed more important
Or have attained worldly prominence.
More so because as with her
In the passage of time
Hundreds thousands of years and more
You will be of no more significance than her.

Bob Boyd

I’m not a believer in demons.
But I believe a collective imagination
could conjure up fake dreams;
as in people believing in them
despite their nonexistence;
as in people feeling affected by them;
as in people believing demons were
nearly everywhere waiting to harass them
or lead them down dark paths.
I think the mind could be like a powerful tool
where one’s dark imaginings could be
turned inward against one.
Thus, I choose not to believe in demons
or entertain any thoughts about them.

Bob Boyd

For some people love seems everlasting,
lasting all their lives, and maybe forever.
For others love comes in and goes, sweet
and seeming forever at first, but bitter and
fleeting, like a cold and frigid winter season.
Maybe some are incapable of lasting love,
or maybe they are fated to never have it.

Bob Boyd

Some people go off too easily
a minor car accident and they
become needlessly enraged.
Other people stay mellow; it’s
just an accident after all.
It’s as if they have a mellow
barometer inside their heads
that keeps them calm no
matter what happens to them.
I don’t think that mellowness
is something you can cultivate
I think some are born with it.

Bob Boyd

I thought the stories about a supposed dogman
would eventually fizzle out, but they keep increasing.
Alleged sightings in nearly every state in the USA,
even some in Canada and worldwide.
What is going on here? Are these sightings all fake?
Or, are some of these sightings legitimate?
I cannot believe all these people could be liars.
I cannot believe all of them could be mistaken.
I cannot believe all of them are hoaxers.
More and more I wonder if some of these sightings
are cryptids popping in and out of this dimension
from unseen dimensions unknowable to us.

Bob Boyd

They had what seemed a perfect marriage,
did many activities together, so much in common.
He died in his fifties; I think of a heart attack.
Because they never had any children,
she was all alone until she died a few years later,
probably of a broken heart that never healed.

Bob Boyd

The nightcrawlers rose to the earth’s surface
after the rains drenched it.

They came up to migrate in the watery ground
to new homes and environments, a few of
them to mate.

They did not see the danger above, as robins
swooped down on them, capturing and devouring many.

Those that stayed underground faced greater dangers
when moles tunneled into their domain and destroyed
the entire nightcrawler population, nightcrawler doomsday,
a worm apocalypse.

Who would have thought being a worm would have posed
such deadly risks?

Not even worms have any safety in this violent predatory world.

Bob Boyd

He felt death coming,
as if it were tangible
like a physical entity
maybe it was
maybe the grim
was real to him and he
felt that figurative
being perceptively coming
for him
perceptively staking
him
seeking his death
to add to the millions
upon millions of
deaths worldwide
every year
the day he died he
believed he felt grim’s
arms around him
as a heart attack
took him out
maybe he was right
maybe the collective
imagination conjured
grim up to the point
some sensitive believers
can feel him coming
provided they
believe in him

Bob Boyd

You’re taking on another person’s peculiarities and problems.
You’re inviting some strife into your life when arguments happen.
You’re risking disappointment and a looming heartache.
The one you love might do things that make you disturbingly jealous.
The one you love may want you to do tiresome activities you don’t want to do.
The one you love might eventually come up with annoying complaints about you that have no validity, that are grating on your very life.
The one you love might eventually stop loving you and leave your heart and your life shattered.
Is it any wonder some are driven to love with artificial intelligences
minus any heartaches, emotional tolls or strife?

Bob Boyd

Reports of haunted houses everywhere,
have the dead nothing better to do
than hang around gloomy old houses?
I don’t know about you, but when I’m
dead, I’ll not be living in a dusty old haunt.
I’ll not self exile myself to such a boring afterlife.
When expired there has to be better things to do,
like consuming an ambrosiac in some blissful paradise
with an incredibly fairy tale like soulmate or riding
unicorns through splendorous, lucent realms
or attending a Jimmy Buffet concert for free and
listening to him singing about 5 o’clock somewhere.
Screw hanging out in old boring houses, those are
just a few of the better things I would do.

Bob Boyd

Joseph says he sees his deceased wife alive in dreams.
Marilyn says she hears her dead husband talking to her nearly everyday.
A bereaved mother sees visions of her son who died in a war.
A dying woman says she sees her deceased husband waiting
to be with her in the afterlife.
Others say they often experience coincidences they know
are from the dead.
Many people report varying encounters with those passed on.
Could all those people be imaging things, or do the dead some
times not stay entirely dead?

Bob Boyd

At first their love was imbued with bliss.
Everyday felt wonderful, nearly ecstatic.
They knew their love was never ending.
After about six months they couldn’t
believe the initial euphoria had passed.
Their love dimmed. Arguments ensued.
They gradually began drifting apart,
realizing they had nothing in common.
In the end when she left him for another,
and the mirage of true love faded away
to him it all seemed so pointless, and
he never got fooled by love again.

Bob Boyd

Jason, a friend for years, revealed a secret to me.
He bought an inflatable doll on Amazon, and to
his surprise, he said he fell in love with it.
He claimed he bought it only as a curiosity, kind
of like an experiment to see if it could arouse
any romantic feelings in him.
Despite the fact Jason seemed sane, he insanely
claimed the doll talked to him.
I met the doll Jason named Veronica, but I didn’t
hear her talking, except through Jason’s interpretations.
That was ten years ago, and Jason and his blow up doll
are still together, and he says he’s happy.
I will say this. He’s done better with his inflatable woman
then I have with flesh and blood ones.
And far as I can tell, he hasn’t lost his sanity, so maybe
he’s on to something, low maintenance and lasting love.

Bob Boyd

A hurricane blew a Christian church apart.
People wondered where was God.
Why did He let the church be demolished?
Where was the Divine protection?
Were the church members not holy enough?
Had the pastor comitted some grave sin?
As for me, I think some disastors are random
with no regard for the sanctity of a building.
Just as I don’t think praying has ever repaired
a broken down car, I don’t think disasters are
preventable by the holiness of a place of worship.
Of course, maybe there are some exceptions.
But in my belief that would be hard to prove.
I don’t think randomn disasters make any exceptions.
If a church if left untouched by a hurricane when
other buildings are demolished, I think it is more
likely just coincidental and not divine protection.

Bob Boyd

He had no problem with preying on
drunk women.
He had no ethics about it.
He didn’t think of himself as a rapist,
but he was damn close to it.
He enjoyed taking advantage of women
when they were close to unconscious.
He made have thought of those as
just more scores.
I think of them as nefarious, the dark
and soulless action of a monster.

Bob Boyd

I swore I’d never use self service checkouts;
they put people out of work.
But I failed in my noble intentions.
Got tired of standing in lines.
Got hooked on the convenience.
Got seduced by the speed.
Out in minutes, occasionally seconds,
no waiting in long lines.
And sometimes there are no cashiers
and you only have the self service checkouts.

I even go to a grocery store a little further away
than one near me, the checkouts are less busy,
and they have more of them.
Thank God I’m retired because someday
a self service machine probably would have
put me out of work too.

Bob Boyd

Sometimes I wonder where they all have gone,
people who disappeared from my past.
People I knew in grade school, like the sweet
little girl, a classmate I used to walk home with
and felt the stirrings of infatuation with. Now I
wonder if I’d known her longer where that
infatuation might have gone. The Hell’s Angel
named Nicky who was a relative of a friend
of mine and offered me a hit of a drug in a club
before a while later he smashed a bat over
a bar patron’s head and with other bikers
blew out of the club and probably never
got arrested. My first love, Pat Curran,
a pretty blonde from New Jersey who
said she would marry me when we got older
only to cheat on me not long after that.
There are so many others, more than I
can count. I’m sure you have that many
people who have disappeared from
your life too.

Bob Boyd