Category: Poems

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

The weather is so fickle here.
Yesterday it was as if fall
had arrived a little early.
I thought the weather was
going to give people a break.
Today it’s up to summer
temperatures again, 78 degrees.
I suspect as in the past the
heat will linger deeper into
this month, September.
Oh how I pine for the
cooler, invigorating weather.

Bob Boyd

Your time is running out
but you don’t want to
think about your upcoming
one way ticket departure
from this tenuous world

sometimes you feel like
you are here forever
except when you wake up
for brief moments and
ponder your impermanence

I don’t blame you one bit
I’ve been the same way
for much of my life

who wants to think of dying
who wants to go to the grave
who wants to think of such
dreadful, depressing things

when you would like to
live forever and die never
especially if everything is
going great in your life

Bob Boyd

She was heart achingly beautiful in her youth
and sexy beyond belief, a living dream many
men dreamed of being with.
Now men who see her just see an unappealing
mishapen, sexless old woman, more like a
nightmare than a dream, and none of them
dream of being with her anymore.
Yet, somehow, she doesn’t seem to care
about the loss of her allure, and I don’t know
how she accepts the loss of her beauty
that amazed men all over the world.
It had to be more devastating than losing
a million fortunes in a disastrous day.
Maybe her mind is more beautiful in it’s
own way, and she sees that beauty is
only superficial and a temporary
treasure in this passing existence
and just doesn’t care about it, like all
those foolishly infatuated men did.

Bob Boyd

No proof of an afterlife exists
according to Scientists, and
I supposed they are right.
But the common threads in
near death experiences
seem as close to proof as
anyone needs for hope in
a continued existence far
from just being eliminated.
They appear as beyond
just having faith in more.
I tend to believe them and
if I’m wrong, I’m okay with
being wrong because when
I’m dead if there’s nothing
I won’t even know it.
I’ll just be dead and free
from worries and concerns.

Bob Boyd

You can’t trust the news anymore.
It’s biased and often untrue.
Whatever happened to objective
journalism and telling the truth?
Sometimes the news lies about
things we see with our own eyes.
They don’t even hide their lies
anymore or think we’re stupid.
How I pine for the days when
news was more objective and
less untrue and blatantly biased.

Bob Boyd

I look at the wrinkled, weathered face of an elderly woman,
and I can see the wrinkle free beauty she used to be.

A sadness like a shadow passes over me thinking about
how beautiful she once was.

I wish she could have kept her beauty forever instead of
aging robbing her of it.

I wish we all could stay young and wrinkle free forever.

I take solace in hoping that at some point we all become young and
beautiful forever when we die regardless of our imperfections and mistakes in this life.

Bob Boyd

There must be a name of a disorder
for people who lie all the time.
They change the truth to suit them
and act like everyone will believe their
false and fabricated untruths,
no matter how evident their lies are.
I’m not sure what compels them to
engage in such deceptive behavior.
Perhaps it’s inborn, an innate
unchangeable part of them, just as
one cannot change the DNA one
is defined by from birth.

Bob Boyd

I’ve never liked vultures.
Maybe I was brainwashed not to.
In movies like ghouls in the sky
I always saw them circling overhead
when someone was close to dying.
And I knew they was salivating to
macabrely eat the dead.
But now I see vultures as only
doing what they’re designed to do,
cleaning up the earth of rotting
carcases, like a public service, like a
street sweeper keeping things tidy
and swept up.

Bob Boyd

Teenagers
delighted
under the
welcoming
summer sun
holding hands
sharing kisses
hearts melting
the warmth of
newfound love
oblivious to the
fact they’re
fated to be
breaking up
when the cold
unwelcoming
winter comes

Bob Boyd

Like humans going about their days
unconcerned about being decimated,
the dinosaurs went about their days
as a massive asteroid was on the way.
Like humans feeling like they’re forever,
the dinosaurs probably felt the same
until the impact of fires and explosions
destroyed them and their world, never
to inhabit it again, all terminally dead.
If the unexpected extinction happened
to them, why wouldn’t it happen to us?
Maybe like the long gone dinosaurs,
were on the cusp of extinction and
only a single massive asteroid away.

Bob Boyd

He hears the howl of the wolf,
but something is off.
The howl has more volume,
deeper too.
He feels the goosebumps
rising on his arm.
A chilling fear overcomes him,
a primal fear engulfs him.
He knows what is coming, and
it’s coming for him.
He has no silver bullets and
no other protections.
All he can do is try to run out of
the forest and pray the werewolf
doesn’t catch up with him.
But before he can reach his car
a scream escapes his lungs.
He’s overpowered by the beast,
and sees the events of his life
pass by in his mind as he’s ripped
to pieces and his life is done.

Bob Boyd

The other night a vampire snuck into one of
my lucid dreams that I don’t have often, and
I swear this is true.

Though the dream was hazy, one thing I knew
it was killed or be killed, and I surprisingly and
thankfully had a sword.

The vampire kept coming at me and I kept
slicing him to pieces, but he wouldn’t die.

Finally somehow I came up with a solution,
cut off his head.

With a quick and mighty swing of the sword,
I severed his grotesque, fanged head from
what remained of his body and finally the
battle was won, the menacing vampire at
last totally, irrevocably dead.

And I woke up feeling like an heroic Helsing
who had won a fight for my life in a lucid but
real lifelike dream world.

But I wondered if the night after my
dreamscape victory, the vampire would
rise from the dead and with a vengeance
try to attack me again, but fortune was with
me and the undead stayed dead.

As I thought about my victory against a
formidable creature of the night that
can mesmerize his victims with ease,
I wondered if like a talisman the wooden
cross that hangs around my neck even
in sleep gave me added protection and
assured my near impossible victory.

Of course I’m wandering into a fictional
scenario, but the dream felt incredibly real,
and I hope I never see another vampire
in a dream again.

Bob Boyd

She’s beautiful and homeless living in
tents along a beach. She looks and is
built like a fashion model, but her mind
just isn’t quite right.

Some probably write her off as crazy.
I see her as a human being who got
a bad break from birth or later in life
when she stricken with mental illness
for the rest of her life.

She’s an example of the many people
suffering mental health fates,
wandering erratically through life.

Most can live normal lives with meds
and therapy, some have been quite
successful and led inspiring lives.

But she is one of the ones who cannot,
and it is heartbreaking that so many
people in this world have to go through
mental health mazes for reasons unclear.

My hope is that when they pass away
they’ll be fixed and okay and have
some kind of compensation for the
trials they endured when they lived
trying and unfairly disconnected lives.

Bob Boyd