Category: Poems

I remember how when my first girlfriend
a lovely teenage, blonde beauty,
would stare into my eyes with
this look that said she wanted
me to kiss her.

In those incomparable moments,
everything vanished from sight,
except her mesmerizing look.

It was as if the entire universe,
the entire world, and everything in it
except her look became nonexistent.

And her kiss, that sweet kiss,
took me beyond this world
into a place that felt like a heaven.

Bob Boyd

George Gilligan, his wife, Theresa, and
his two children, Lisa, 5 and Gregory, 4
arrived at their home in Evansville,
Indiana on January 14, 1980
and were shot to death by a killer
named Donald Ray Wallace,
who had been robbing their home.

It so sad and so tragic that often in
this world, good people who harmed
no one are randomly murdered, as
if this life is often like a matter of
good or bad luck.

And even though most of us feel safe
and take precautions to avoid being
victims of murders, sometimes we
become the randomly murdered like
all those who felt as if random murders
only happened to other, unknown people
they saw or heard about on the news.

Bob Boyd

Bob Boyd

I see the tree leaves dancing in the wind
outside my apartment window. It’s
as though the wind has miraculously
imbued them with life.
I wonder if the leaves have any awareness
of how the wind feels against their epidermis,
and if the feel of the wind is pleasing to them.
Were I a leaf, I think I’d like the feel of the wind
and the joy and the fun of dancing in it.

Bob Boyd

How beautiful are the white tree petals blossoming on the tree next to the second floor apartment I live in. When I was working, I never noticed them, perhaps blinded by the business of my daily affairs and not as aware of nature budding before me as I am now that I’m retired and my eyes have opened more to the goings on outside my apartment in the street and surroundings below. And I am wondering how long those beautiful petals will last before they die like me and everything else does in this temporary life that used to seem like it was forever when was when I was a child and like those newly blossomed white tree petals. And dying was something that only happened to old people, who seemed born old and destined to die.

Bob Boyd

I saw a documentary by David Paulides who writes books about the missing 411 people, those who have vanished, usually in national parks under mysterious circumstances with no confirmable traces of what happened to them.

For example, a person goes missing, and all that is found of him is his shoes and trackers, search and rescue dogs, and others never find him or any clues as to what happened to him.

Now, as many have speculated about the 411s, David Paulides seems to have joined the chorus of the very real possibility that aliens are silently and stealthily snatching 411s from this world.

When you watch his documentary, you see some credible people who had encounters with aliens, one who like a fish thrown back in the water, was told he wasn’t what the aliens wanted and returned to earth dazed and astonished by the abduction.

I’m at an age when I no longer feel like hiking. But after reading and listening to many accounts of missing 411s and the allegedly hundreds of thousands that have gone missing in national parks and elsewhere, were I younger, I doubt I’d ever go hiking in forests again, like I did when I was younger. Unless I went with a group of people and one or more of them were armed.

When you read and/or listen to enough of these cases with even hunters and trackers among the 411 missing, it’s easy to get paranoid about hiking in a forest alone or with others.

Bob Boyd

Cold spell has dropped in just when it was getting
comfortably warm, just when I was enjoying it.
Annoys me when the weather becomes so inconsistent
from warm to cold.

I’m fine with it staying one way or the other, but to have a cold spell as spring as set in, and flowers have begun to awaken into the warmth, is disturbing to me.

I don’t care when the weather’s wintry how cold it becomes as long as it stays consistently cold.
Likewise with warm weather I prefer a consistency rather than wavering from 70 degrees to 40.

Perhaps became I’m in a much older body, my inner thermostat has gotten cranky just like some old men supposedly do.

If that’s so, hopefully my disposition never gets cranky too.

Bob Boyd

Rats get a bad rap and were misidentified with
starting the Black Plague when fleas were the cause.
Rats are seen as pariahs and nuisances, and there
are unquestionably valid reasons for that.
According to an article in Prevention Magazine,
rats spread more than 35 illnesses to humans.
But who among us is perfect, and who among us
hasn’t spread a disease to another human being
and possibly a pet or two?
I see rats as being like humans, just doing what
they do. And what they do is without malicious
intent unlike the malicious intent some humans
harbor.
At least in India rats get some love at the Karni Mata
Temple in India where rats are revered and treated
with devotional love and tender care.
At least some people love rats and have them as
pets.
There’s even a National Fancy Rats Society
where clearly rats get their respect and loving due.
As for me, I have no quarrel with rats and wouldn’t
be surprised if there were angel rats in heaven.

Bob Boyd

This is why I have presently have squirrels playing in a band at the top of this blog.
I like the cute, the playful, and the impossibility of that.
This is why I have a Kangaroo bartending at the top of this poem.
Once I took a course in the Theatre of the Absurd. I liked that course, and I like absurd and surreal things and situations.
I find them a refreshing change from the things and situations of ordinary life.
I find them fascinating and sometimes close to mind blowing, like Dali’s melting clocks.
It could be that absurd and surreal things are a taste of an afterlife where anything and everything is possible, like a real Alice’s Wonderland.

Bob Boyd

I often wonder if love is ever after
Despite it seeming to end when lovers die.
Despite many wives and husbands finding new loves
when their husbands or wives pass away,
as if their loves were only temporary
and traded for other temporary loves.

I don’t blame those wives and husbands
for finding new loves.
I’d probably do the same.
It’s a hard road living life on your own
without someone to love, and if love is
only temporary, it doesn’t matter anyway.

Sure some stay the course married
or in love for the remainder of their days.
But what happens after death?
Is romantic love dissolved into
unconditional love for everyone?
Is there no romantic love after death?
My hope is romantic love is ever after,
and those who don’t find true or lasting
love in this temporary world find
true and lasting love in the afterlife.

Bob Boyd

Dead but not gone
Arisen from the grave
Never left the earth plane
Stuck or unable to
Some appear as only
Replaying images
No interactions
No sounds
No eye contact
No temperature changes
No touches
Others dynamic
Can do some
Or all of those things
Opinions vary on legitimacy
Real or unreal
Skeptics abound
Believers as well
Those who have
Seen restless souls
Have no doubts

Bob Boyd

He looks outside the hotel window
and sees his love driving away
after an awful teary breakup.
This time he knows she’s not
coming back, and he’ll never see
her again.

He was more right than he
realized. His girlfriend had a car
accident that night that took her
out of this world forever.

Now he sits in a room in that same hotel,
a hotel he stays in on business trips.

The day grows dark, and rain starts to fall
along with his tears as he remembers
the love he lost forever.

Bob Boyd

Perhaps unknown to you,
you are on a tightrope in this life.
At every turn, at every step, at
every breath, you could fall off it –
as all eventually do.

Death by illness, a car
accident, a physical attack,
a stray bullet, a mass
shooting, a fall down a stairs,
an accidental poisoning, a
push into a subway or an
oncoming car, or something
else.

You feel like you’ll never lose
your balance, as most others do –
as if they’re here forever.

But one day you’ll fall off the
tightrope hopefully later rather
than sooner – dying too young,
as so many do.

Bob Boyd

Nguyet Le was a manager in an Arby’s restaurant.
One night in 2023 she went into the freezer
(Temperatures in Arby store freezers are usually
ten degrees below zero).

She got trapped in the freezer and pounded
on the freezer door until her hands were
bloodied, and she collapsed into the fetal position
on the floor and froze to death.

According to a lawsuit filed by her family, the freezer
door had been broken since 2022 and “employees
used a screwdriver to help open and close the door”
and “a box of oil to help keep the freezer door open.”

Horrible way to leave this world, and I hope the
family wins the lawsuit.

And I hope Nguyet Le is in a better place now free of
the worries and the sorrows of this uncertain world
where tragedies are always only a moment away.

And things that only happen to other people can
happen to me and you.

Bob Boyd

Hardworking men pulling rickshaws on dusty streets.
Rich Chinese being carried by 4 men on litters,
like small rooms with two long poles on the shoulders
of the men.
Mourners wearing all white in funeral processions.
Bodies left above ground for 40 days in graveyards before burial for proper mourning and preparation for the afterlife.
Camels walking in a line on the streets with bulky loads on their backs.
Street performers playing musical instruments.
Jugglers and contortionists exhibiting their talents.
Crowds of people watching.
Open air bazaars. Many people shopping.
Bird sellers selling birds.
Puppet shows and a sword fighter showing off his skills, two swords in the air, hands and swords as if flying.
A barber washing and cutting hair.
Street cobblers mending shoes.
People eating and washing clothes on sidewalks.
Street peddlers selling many goods.
Men with two sprinkler water buckets on their shoulders, sprinkling the streets to keep the dust down.
Legions of men walking by carrying heavy loads now carried by trucks.
Some pulling the heavy loads with ropes.
An ancient trolley car rolls by on rails.
Children working with adults hewing wood and logs.
Two men with two-man long saw sawing wooden planks.
Beautiful boats, cities and rivers.
How I would have liked to have seen it all in person in 1917.

Bob Boyd

There was a time when some people in some countries covered their mirrors at night for fear of a soul getting trapped in a mirror when the soul was wandering in a dream.

There was a time when some people in some countries covered their mirrors after someone died for fear the dead person’s soul could get trapped in a mirror.

I only know three things about mirrors:

If you break one, you might get seven years of bad luck.

If you truly are a vampire, you won’t see yourself in one.

If I look into a mirror, I always look much younger than I really am.

For the last thing, I know it’s an illusion because I look my true age in photos.

On a related note, and speaking of souls, I know, unlike with some primitive beliefs, when I’m photographed my soul won’t get trapped in a camera, fingers crossed. 🙂