If ever I came into a ton of money,
I’d build a sanctuary city for little birds.
Little lifeforms that rarely live full lives,
devoured by bigger birds, always
living in fear of predators on the hunt.
The city would be a giant aviary well
supplied with food, sunshine and trees.
For once, little birds would have a
safe world to live in never to be
killed and devoured by larger avian
prey, able to live full, fear free lives.
The thought of this sanctuary city
makes me wonder if when little
birds die, they go to something
akin to a sanctuary city heaven.

Bob Boyd

A 19-year-old man, a model college
student with a bright future, heard
a guy arguing with his girlfriend.
He looked over at him briefly and
looked away.
The guy, a big, angry thug, said,
“What are you looking at?”
The young man wisely ignored him.
They both bordered the same
train.
The young man sat in the back of
the train car far away from the thug
and his girlfriend in the front of it.
A ways into the train ride, the
thug started arguing loudly with his
girlfriend again, making a public scene.
Enraged he left his seat and stomped
up the aisle to the back of the train
where the young man was sitting quietly.
Apprehensive from his first contact with
the crazed thug, the young man didn’t
look at him.
The avoidance of another brief look
didn’t spare the young man.
The thug pulled a knife out of his pants
pocket and stabbed the young man in
the chest, so hard the knife broke in half
and killed the young man.
Unbelievable how a random glance
upon hearing abusive arguing led to
the loss of a young man’s productive
life, his promising future, all his dreams.

Bob Boyd

He had a track record of violence.
It began in his childhood.
He bullied other kids, and killed
neighbor’s dog, raped a girl.
I don’t care what some so called
experts claim. I know he wasn’t a
case of bad nurture from an
abusive family upbringing.
His siblings from the same family
turned out fine with never any
bad behaviors.
I’ve no doubt he was what is called
a bad seed from the day he was born.
What I don’t know is why in God’s
creation many bad seeds are planted
in this crime and violence ridden world.

Bob Boyd

It preys on babies,
young and old people
too.
Its stealth is unbelievable.
Nobody sees it coming.
Its kill rate is shocking.
Monsters cannot compare
to its wholesale ravages, to
all the people it sneaks up
on and kills every single
day of every year.
Its name is cancer, and its
coming for 1 out of 3 women
and 1 out of 2 men.
Pray you’re not on its hit list.

Bob Boyd

She always preferred the nights.
She never liked the days.
She thought she might have been
a vampire in a former life.
Full moons always made her a
little crazy, so I wondered if she
might have been a werewolf
in another former life.
And I sorta wasn’t surprised
when one full moon night she
went a little too crazy and
shot an ex husband to death.
I always knew like a vampire,
like a werewolf, she had
an abundance of evil in her.

Bob Boyd

I remembered him as a good kid
in high school, quiet and always
well behaved.

I hadn’t seen him in years until
I met him one day on a street
in the city we lived in.

he’d changed beyond anything
I ever would have expected.

he said he’d just got out of
prison and knew he’d be going
back and didn’t care.

I didn’t ask him what crime he
had committed that put him in
prison.

I didn’t want to pry, and I was too
shocked that this once good kid
had surprisingly become
a criminal and didn’t care about
being imprisoned again.

Maybe his criminality was
simmering under his well behaved
and quiet nature.
Maybe the good kid was
always engaged in hidden
criminal acts and never got
caught until he got older
and less cautious.

I don’t know, and I’ll never
understand his metamorphose
from a good kid to a criminal
indifferent to imprisonment.

bob boyd

can lie and spread disinformation
as if it were absolute truth.

can paint the good guys as the
bad guys.

can portray evil as virtue.

can turn right into wrong and
wrong into right.

can sway a million minds to
hate a million innocents.

can demonize saints and glorify
evil-doers.

can put bullseyes on people’s
backs and get them killed with no
concern for their lives

with no remorse for complicity and
infamy in these murders.

bob boyd

Always wars
somewhere
never peace
everywhere
historically
even worse
abundant
wars and
stolen lands
maybe peace
will only
happen when
the nukes
or something
else ends
us all.

Bob Boyd

I see a tiny bird
smaller than a chickadee
bigger than a bumblebee
landing on a branch
in a spreading tree
building a new nest
for a family.

Bob Boyd

Dreams, a mishmash of
scenes and visuals
strange happenings and
puzzling occurrences
unknown people and
bizarre scenarios
most dreams seem to
make no sense
the whys and wherefores
vague or obscure
perhaps merely something
for the mind to digest
while the body is offline

Bob Boyd

His courage stirred with thoughts of glory,
He yearned to experience combat in a war.
He was young, invincible and courageous,
and he always loved movies about wars,
the glorious battles and the conquests.
But he wasn’t mentally prepared for the
horrors he saw in the many battles
he was engaged in.
Blood running in rivulets.
Arms and legs blown off.
Heads and bodies exploding.
Flesh ripped from faces and limbs.
The stench of death rising in the air.
The cries, moans and screams of the
wounded and the dying.
He came home from the war a hero.
But he was never the same again,
his days and nights plagued with the horrors
and the nightmares of all he saw in the war.

Bob Boyd

She greets the morning with her sweetness
and remains the same throughout her day.
She brings delight to all who meet her.
Her nature has always been that way.
I’ve often wondered if she were one of
those people who are angels among us
gracing the earth as humans in disguise.

Bob Boyd

Never forget you are only
here temporarily.
It can seem in forgetful
moments that you are
here forever.
God knows I’d forgotten
many times.
And didn’t live my
precious life as I would
have if I’d been more
cognizant of my
impermanence, but in
the end, perhaps it
matters little whether
you use your time
wisely or squander
it away.

Bob Boyd

Easily persuaded to follow
the lies of those in power.
Easily brainwashed to hate
the targeted people or race.
Never questioning.
Always following.
Morphing into a mindless
mass to do the bidding.
Their country or their
leader right or wrong
is what they think
like a wrongheaded
patriotic song.
Hitler made good use
of them when they
approved of or helped
with the slaughter of
six million
innocent people.

Bob Boyd

The woods were dark.
The night was eerie.
Strange sounds lit
up the darkness.
She wondered if
going camping by
herself had been a
dangerous mistake.
Too late she learned
she was right.
Her blood was
spattered all around
her camp site, and
the police are still
searching for her
body.

Bob Boyd

Handsome looks
Charming personality
Disarming smile
Tall and well built
All around nice guy
From a good family
With plenty of money
He had it all
Everybody liked him
Especially women
Had many girlfriends
Despite his advantages
Strangled eight women
And teenage girls
To death from 1974 to 1975
Got his highs from kills
Robert Reldan sentenced to
Life in prison – 1979
A monster born to kill
Died in 2014 in prison

Bob Boyd

Deep sea creatures dead bodies
never float to the surface
of the sea.

They sink to the bottom of the
sea.

The high pressure
the density
the solidity
of the sea
at those depths

keeps its own.

Bob Boyd

He always went hiking alone
despite knowing people
shouldn’t hike alone in case
of an accident or unexpected
dangers.

He didn’t need that kind of
help.
He was freakishly strong,
a seasoned survivalist, and
he always armed himself
with a gun.

Despite his bravado and his
preparedness, he felt an eerie
feeling that day when he
hiked in a forest he was
unfamiliar with.

He experienced something
he’d never experienced before.

The forest became ominously quiet.
No birds sang. No insects hummed.
Darkness spread across the
forest.

Frightened, he reached for his gun.

Too late.

In a millisecond, he was snatched
out of this existence by a
monstrous entity that resembled
a giant praying mantis and
devoured him in an unknown
dimension.

The authorities. The trackers.
The search and rescue dogs. The
hundreds of volunteers. Never
found a trace of him.

Bob Boyd

He worked for a state government
in the USA with the protection of a
union.

And a more annoying person, you
probably could not find.

He abused his union protection
when he had an interview to work
at another city for the state
government, and his future
supervisor was late for the
interview.

He reported her for her tardiness
to the state government’s home
office, not a wise move.

Because of the union rules, she
had to hire him despite seeing him
as an impossible person to have
to supervise or even get along
with.

Things got irreversibly worse.

At the mandatory Friday meetings
he always asked annoying
questions that ticked off the
supervisor and her supervisor.

Eventually he went too far with
his errant behavior, and despite
his union protection, he got fired.

But, damn, he made those boring,
mandatory Friday meetings so
much fun, and myself and the
other state employees always
looked forward to them.

Bob Boyd

She had an itch
that made her
always have to
get herself in
trouble

She couldn’t refrain
her compulsion
to disturb what
could have been a
peaceful life

Over and over
she repeated her
folly

And over and over
she was put in jail

until possibly to end
the itch that wouldn’t
cease

She found a way to
hang herself to death
in a prison cell.

Bob Boyd