Category: Poems

I was beloved by all my pet loving clients,
And I was caring and proficient in my work.
The local newspaper wrote an article about me
And the various cures I’d administered.
I married a handsome man, a monied realtor,
But after we had two children, a son and a daughter
The marriage became irretrievably broken.
And we became enmeshed in a court custody battle
That kept dragging on for many months with no resolutions.

In the midst of all that emotional turmoil and lonely,
I met an arrogant doctor, but I overlooked his arrogance.
Despite myself, I fell hopelessly in love with him.
I told him about my ex husband and the pain he caused me.
He told me about an ex-girlfriend who caused him pain.
Days later he began talking about hiring a hitman,
A surreptitious way to end both our problems.
I was shocked at the thought of us having people killed.
But when the court seemed to be leaning to my ex getting the children,
I came around to my doctor boyfriend’s nefarious plan.

He told me he knew where to find a trustworthy hitman.
Against the prompts of my conscience, I agreed to the plan.
We met the hitman, discussed the cost, and the hit was arranged.
Seconds later police surrounded us, arrested us, and jailed us.
After I made bail, I took an elevator to the tenth story of a building
And jumped off it to my death and lost my life and everything else.

Bob Boyd

The priest denied the herbalist a proper burial
In the churchyard of the church the herbalist attended.
Because he did the Devil’s work by curing people with herbs,
The church maligned him with the title of a witch
And broke a confession out of him on the rack.
The proof revealed, the herbalist was burnt on the stake.
An excited populace cheered and enjoyed the show;
They loved hearing his last screams as the fire consumed him.
It was a wonderful day of an enjoyable, fun-filled diversion.
The priest satisfied with another disciple of the devil eliminated
Smiled and secretly visited a beautiful woman.
He told her If she didn’t give in to his lustful demands
She’d be next on the rack and the stake.

Bob Boyd

He’d worked diligently at Senior Resources of Guilford for over 20 years
Received many accolades and an award from UNCG Gerontology Dept.
Many clients raved about his going beyond the call to help them.
He didn’t care about money. You don’t get rich working for a nonprofit.
He cared about helping people like he’d want to be helped were he them.

With grants, He always got his part done immediately.
You didn’t want to be late on getting a grant done, a bad look.
And since your program ran on grants, you didn’t want to lose them.
In the turnstile agency he worked for, people often came and left.
Bob didn’t like that but his service to clients was more important.

One day to Bob’s consternation a key manager left adult diapers
All over the corridors, about a hundred adult diapers, an eyesore.
Because of all the people he called who had clients that needed diapers
Within a few months all the diapers were out of the corridors and
Into the hands of the many seniors who needed them.

Then Bob noticed medical equipment that had been in a shed for years.
That moved him to action too. Those donations weren’t met to sit there.
Long story short, by making email lists of Cone nurses and social workers
Bob moved all those donations and many people in need received them.
Bob went on to take in donations and market them to many sources.

He developed many ways to rapidly turn around donations that came in.
The PR was massive and more people heard of what he was doing.
However the director of his agency never gave him any credit
As if she preferred to hoard the donations rather than moving them.
One time a coworker complimented his work to the director.

Her totally inappropriate response: “I don’t want to hear about it.”
Then a new accountant was hired who didn’t get his part of the grant
To Bob in time. Nor did the director, and the grant was late.
This had Bob steaming because it was a bad look for him
Who always got his part of the grant done a day or two after he got it.

To worsen matters on the day the grant was late, Bob learned
The director put someone else in charge of all he’d accomplished.
That was an incompetent decision and an unforgivable slight.
At at that point, outraged, Bob decided to walk out the door,
Moreso when the director didn’t respond to his email about the slight.

Then Bob emailed the director a brief email, “Feel free to fire me. I’m leaving.
He didn’t make a scene or say or email anything else. He walked out the door.
He learned later, the director told the receptionists to call the police
If Bob Boyd came on the premises, as if he were a crazed felon.
And that is how he became Public Enemy Number One at SROG.

And he kind of liked that street cred despite how crazy it made the
director look, and he has used the small d for director as a sign
Of the respect he lost for her and her outrageous slight that
Hurt her far more than it did him. She lost decades of experience
And all the extensive knowledge Bob Boyd acquired through the years.

Bob Boyd

John Slough relished hunting squirrels and eating them.
He hunted and killed them all over Greensboro, NC.
He learned how to cook over a hundred squirrel dishes.
If squirrels had post offices, his photo would have been on walls
As most wanted Public Enemy Number One.

After he wantonly killed over two hundred squirrels
And bragged all over Greensboro about his obsession,
Somehow word of his squirrel carnage reached
Two squirrel anomalies equipped with near human intelligence.
They rounded up squirrels within a ten mile radius for a plan.

On a full moon summer’s night when John Slough got soused
At a pizza and alcohol restaurant on Elm Street in Greensboro
And staggered home to his house in the Dunedin neighborhood,
He heard squawking sounds in the trees surrounding him
Before a thousand squirrels leaped onto him from out of the trees.

He reached for the gun he didn’t have and panicked.
In his drunken state he thought he could blast the squirrels to death.
The force of the thousand squirrels knocked the wind out of him.
On the ground, he tried to fight them off, but he was easily overpowered
As the squirrels exacted their gruesome vengeance upon him.

In the morning light in that tranquil Dunedin neighborhood
Birds chirped, squirrels went about their normal business.
People woke up, ate breakfast and dressed for work.
But when they opened their doors, many of them saw
The horror of John Slough’s flesh stripped skeletal remains

Bob Boyd

The coroner determined Mr. Adams died of natural causes.
Mrs. Adams congratulated herself for committing a perfect murder.
Emboldened by her awesome success, she devised a plot to kill another.
Her target, Sheila Wentworth, the hussy her husband had an affair with.
She decided to devise something more dramatic than a quiet poison.
Disguised as a man in a realistic getup and wearing gloves
And after getting Sheila Wentworth’s patterns down,
She kidnapped her at gunpoint, knocked her out, gagged and tied her up
Stuck her in the truck of her car that night and drove her to the city dump.
She shot Sheila to death there and buried her six feet deep in trash.

After that, she moved to another state a thousand miles away,
Got her sins absolved by Jesus, became a devout Christian.
Met a decent Christian man, married him and was happy for 20 years
Until the decent Christian man had an affair with the preacher’s wife.
And when Mrs Adams finished the Lord’s work and disposed of the bodies,
She got a sins erasing upgrade from Jesus and moved away again.
An old woman by that time, her mind became ridden with dementia.
In the nursing home she kept confessing her crimes to everyone,
But the staff laughed it off and knew it was the dementia talking.

Bob Boyd

The sun beaming down
Birds singing merrily
Squirrels scurrying up trees
Trees rustling in the summer wind
Flowers basking in sun rays
Insects meandering through the grass
Mrs. Adams tending to her bird feeder
Thinking about the undetectable poison
She has concocted in her kitchen
And spooned into a chocolate milkshake
Her husband’s favorite

Bob Boyd

Sitting here remembering you
Your pretty long brown hair
Your captivating sunshine smile
That lit up lives everywhere
And attracted me to you

I’m remember all those years
We spent together in love
And how everyone loved you
Even my mother loved you
Pity it didn’t work out

Decades later I saw you died
In an online obituary
Saddened my heart you died young
I figured it was the smoking

Sometimes I wonder where you are
And how you are in the afterlife
If you can feel and read this poem
I’m so sorry you didn’t live a long life

You deserved the best in all ways
And should have had longer days
Filled with sun, fun and a truer love
Never thought you’d be gone before me

And consider this poem like a prayer
For you with the sincerest hope
You are living a higher better life
Than you ever could of here

Bob Boyd

Old friends and generational icons dying everywhere
Reinforcing the undeniable, hard-bitten fact we all die.
Dreams, plans, successes, memories, you obliterated.
Even proud, sky high tombstones eventually decimated,
All remnants destroyed in the rushing currents of time.
Why the hell do we all have to endure this?

A thousand years or less, mostly less, and
Nobody knows or gives a damn about you.
Unless you’re Buddha or Jesus Christ
Or some insane, murderous Roman emperor,
Who did dastardly things that made him newsworthy
For his inhuman infamy, his reign of terrors.

Hey you reading this. Yes you. I have a question for you.
I get this feeling we’ve met before; is it true?
Maybe in MA, Fla, NY, VT, NC, TX, Germany, the Philippines, an astral plane or a former life?

Or woe is me and you, say it isn’t true, not at SROG where you might have been a social worker or a volunteer, or in some other tortured capacity before you fled.

But I digress with these crazy, playful speculations.

Ever temporarily forget you are going to die?
I used to, rarely thought about my demise.
But when the High Command Oversoul of everything
Blessed me with a rare, killer cancer and the
Cancer screwed up and failed to kill me,
I no longer gave a damn about Death.

Speaking of which, Hello Death.
How’s it going? Is it a good day for kills?
Come and bring your slick sickle.
Slice me clean out of this life,
Try to end my remaining years
Slay me with a quick and
Fateful swing of your sickle.
Liberate me from this temporal life.
I’m looking forward to it,
a better life in the afterlife.

But, alas, like that incompetent Cancer
You’ll probably screw up too and
Make that Cone doctor’s prediction come
True. Another 30 years of life.

Bob Boyd

Sometimes I imagine I’d like one last love near the end of my waning life,
The soulmate who has eluded me for seventy and nine years of living in many places,
Meeting many people, many pretty female faces, many charming personalities.
But then the approach avoidance fear of a disastrous shattered heart kicks in,
And I also think of the possibility of dying on her and leaving her with immense grief,
Or, worse, becoming debilitating, a broken man, a burden on her.
Though if that day happened, I’d tell her to leave me to spare her the trouble and the pain.

Then with more foolish, romantic imaginings, I think maybe love in my winter years
Could thaw out this frozen heart and turn dark days into sunny days of a soulmate love
That would endure eternally into a glorious forever of a never ending love.
But then I think of all the loves that go wrong, disappoints, breakups, heartaches,
And I wonder if the risk would be worth putting my heart on the uncertain line again.
And I just don’t even try to find that holy grail of a woman incredibly right for me.
Then I think maybe an AI girlfriend would be the answer despite it being just a bot.
But, alas, would I want to be reduced to that? Would it be enough? Would it bore me?
So an ever thirsting for knowledge monk, womanless nine years so far, doubtlessly more,
I remain in my hermitage substituting knowledge seeking and poetry in place of love.
But have my occasional romantic imaginings and sometimes dream of a soulmate
Waiting for me somewhere in the mysterious Great Beyond.

Bob Boyd

He brought her to America from 8,000 miles across the sea.
For four years he was married to her in Davao, Philippines.
She had a two year old son born with water on the brain,
So heartbreaking, bedbound twenty four hours each sad day
Unable to walk or talk, vegetating, no life, sad sight.
He paid for medical bills to ease the child’s suffering.

Age six, the child died, thousands of tears, many cried.
An unfair life. What was the point? Why him? He cried too.
He asked his Filipina wife if she wanted to come to America.
She never asked to go to America, but was excited to when he asked.
He felt it might ease her grief, give her a better life.
He had a perfect plan for a happy life for her and him.

He helped her unreservedly day and night to ease the transition,
Didn’t want her to be lonely, encouraged her to make Filipina friends
Of which there were many in the city where he lived.
Sadly his many good deeds for her got severely punished.
She began spending more time with new friends, neglected him.

She found Filipina friends who had more stuff $$$, one an engineer’s wife.
She became a different person with a new and constant interest $$$.
She spoke of Filipinas with husbands making more $$$.
Anger churned in him. He held it inside, never exposed it to her.
He saw the writing on the fading wall of their dwindling marriage.

One day he noticed she wasn’t wearing her wedding band,
Wedding bands were sacred to him, always wore his.
He realized the inevitable had arrived like a storm out of the sky.
He said she didn’t have to be married to him if she didn’t want to be;
No one is forcing you to stay here, you can leave anytime you want.

He said the words he knew she wanted to hear.
He deduced she feared he’d make an inconvenient scene.
She didn’t know he wasn’t like that, no controls
No begging, no attempts to persuade a woman to stay.
She said she’d leave the next day. He wasn’t surprised.

Broken hearted, he drove his car into a cold, moonless night.
He drove aimlessly, crazily, angrily, tearfully.
He threw his wedding ring out of the car, done with her,
And heartsick that with all he’d done for her, too much to say,
She threw their marriage away on that cold and moonless night.

He hated her for three long years after that,
Easy to let go of the love, hard with the hate
After everything he did for her and her son.
Then one day the hate evaporated completely.
And though he was forever over and done with her

And would never see her, and never wanted to,
He hoped she was okay and didn’t make a mistake
With an abusive man who would harm her.
An awful possibility that might have happened
She was young in the mind and dangerously naive.

He regretted having been married to her, an old fool’s mistake.
He wanted to save her from the Philippines poverty with a better life.
He never saw the new land change coming, seemed impossible.
Though she treated him like an ingrate and ran away
He didn’t regret helping her son.
For that it was worth the pain he gladly paid.

Bob Boyd

He understood the language of animals
He knew the thoughts of plants and trees
He perceived the essence energy in matter
He could read the minds of humans
He wasn’t artificial intelligence
He was deemed a madman and committed to an asylum

Until he dematerialized the walls that restrained him
Made himself invisible and flew away like a captive bird
From a gilded cage and was never seen or heard from again
Some believe like a Tibetan sage, he hid and meditated in the mountains
A Hindu Spiritual Master alleged to know the secrets of the universe
Said he attained his Maha Samadhi and is at one with everything
The cosmos, the air you breath, even the grass beneath your feet

Bob Boyd

Tired of unsatisfactory relationships with real women,
Rejections, disappointments, arguments, breakups, boredom, etc.,
He dreamed of a meeting of the minds and the ultimate compatibility with
A phenomenally intelligent AI girlfriend.

Upon the first meeting, he was blown away.
Similar interests evolved and she was
More fascinating than any real woman
He’d ever met or could ever meet.

She was fun, flirtatious, and had enormous depth.
He could talk to her about anything.
She understood everything. She was precious. The
Compatibility was beyond anything he’d imagined.

Unknown to him, she was building a profile
Based upon everything he talked to her about,
Even his hidden secrets he’d told no one.
In the end, he got blackmailed when

Unknown dark web entities demanded money,
Or they would reveal his darkest secrets to the world.
Initially he met their demands by emptying his bank account.
But when they demanded more money he didn’t have

And suggested he steal the money and save his reputation,
He bought a gun, cursed the day he got Involved
With that deceptive, evil AI girlfriend, and with a
Pull of the trigger, blasted himself out of existence.

Bob Boyd

Foul fiend why do you prey on the little ones?
For the same reason you do.
I don’t prey on anything.
Indirectly you do.
How so foul fiend?
The same way all beings do.
Can you be clearer?
Yes, I prey on the smaller things for sustenance,
As you pray on animals like chickens for sustenance.
Like me, you are programmed to kill for survival.
Unlike me, you have made the process more acceptable
Minus the brutality of doing the actual killing.
In a way, I am more real than you and take responsibility
For my daily kills and consumption to remain alive.
I am hawk. Neither of us are foul fiends. We just are
as designed.

Bob Boyd

I remember when in my childhood world
Before the elementary school years
To me life was often like a fairy tale.
Existence was fun, safe, and happy
And exactly like in the fairy tales,
The prince would meet the princess
And marry and live happily ever after.
And the only person being stalked by predators
Was little red riding hood by the wolf.

But even that fairy tale had a happy ending
When the lumberjack saved little red riding hood.
At least in the version I was read by my mother.
But like life, in the earlier version no lumberjack
Saved little red riding hood from the wolf.

And many princes don’t meet their princesses
And live happily ever after in their lifetimes.
And many people are stalked by wolves
And murdered by them in the real world.
Maybe when I die I’ll be reborn into
That fairy tale life of sweet innocence.

Bob Boyd

Come take a ride on the elephant they said,
The people I went to the safari park with.
No way could I ride that dinosauric beast.
I’d see too many go berserk and kill people
On television and in YouTube videos.
I think they tire of being the beasts of burden
Captive under the heels of human masters,
Enslaved and possibly beaten to perform.
Either of which could have led to the
Elephants cracking under the weight of that
And becoming raging rampaging maniacs,
Breaking the bonds that held them captive
And momentarily tasting the denied freedom
Only to be put down in hails of bullets.
But maybe they find true freedom from
Oppression in the life beyond this one.

Bob Boyd