Category: Poems

Conspiracy theory or urban legend,
sightings of black-eyed children are
reported around the world.

Big black eyes, no whites, no irises,
they emanate a menacing feeling.

One, a little girl in a forest in Britain,
had an unnaturally bent neck and
a nonhuman, jerky running gait.

Sometimes they are alleged to
appear at your door asking to
come in.

Instinctively you feel if you let
them in, danger or death will follow.

No one knows what these black-eyed
children are really about.

No one knows if they are real or
just a conspiracy theory or an urban legend,

except those who might have
seen them.

Bob Boyd

Read an article on Daily Mail about married men spending thousands of dollars on women on OnlyFans.

One spent so much it sent his family into bankruptcy.

How insulting and heartbreaking for the wives.

I see it as the same as an infidelity.

And had I a girlfriend or a wife who spent
her time, let alone her money, on OnlyFans
looking at and talking to men,

she would not only lose my respect for her;

she would also lose her only real fan… me.

Bob Boyd

It has its perks:

No compromising.

No disappointing relationships
when the ecstasy of falling
in love has tapered off.

No walking on eggs.

No broken hearts.

No arguments and hurtful words.

No cheating or deceitful behavior.

Total peace of mind with no ripples in
your serenity.

Free and self determined to the max.

Worthwhile tradeoffs for a life without love
despite the occasional agonies,
and the longings.

That arise on the surface of your serenity
because of the inborn need
for a significant someone
to fill your life with affection and love.

Bob Boyd

Rich and tired of gold digging women.
Divorced one time too many.
Sick of the drama and the drain on his money,
the constant spending of frivolous things,
the alimony.

Sick of the superficial personalities, the plastic looks,
the high maintenance — he decided to
try someone new in a woman.

For 50,000 dollars he bought a robot wife
as real and interactive as the replicants in
the movie Blade Runner.

He didn’t have her programmed to be like a
mindless Stepford wife, a slave and not an equal.

He had her programmed to be a loving woman
and a perfect supportive intelligent companion
who would be there for him forever, who would
gently get him on course if ever he went off course
by treating her unfairly or badly.

As far as her not being a human woman, he
reasoned even human woman are not real either
when they leave you or when one of you die
and what was temporarily real has become
unreal.

He lived a happy life with his robot wife until he
died and she self-destructed.

Bob Boyd

Beneath the skin of
The one we fondle today,
There is a skeleton,
Propping up the flesh.

Ikkyu

I find that poem disturbing
and far too realistic,

though it truly captures the
true nature of impermanence.

It disturbs me thinking that a
woman I was making love to
would one day be dead and
skeletal.

Bob Boyd

Originally called
Talking boards
Flat with letters
And numbers
Planchette for movable
Indicator
Hands on planchette
Questions asked
Strange or
Nonsense messages
Maybe true automatic writing
With spirits coming through
Supposedly from the dead
Stories of evil spirits
Coming through
Maybe untrue
But quite scary
Just the same
Some reports suggest
Possessions
Of more than
A few
True or untrue

Bob Boyd

Three beautiful Mongolian women, exotic,
mystical, dark eyes. Bodies swaying,
each playing a Mongolian instrument
called a Shnaz.

The women and their moves, mesmerizing.
The music they are playing a delight.
Were I a young man, I’d want to go
to Mongolia and meet a beautiful
Shnaz playing Mongolian woman tonight.

Bob Boyd

When I had cancer about 3 years ago,
I had to have my blood drawn by phlebotomists
every week for blood tests.

The phlebotomists were always females,
and they marveled over my veins, as if my
veins were visual pheromones that were
magnetically intoxicating to
phlebotomists of the female persuasion.

Had I only known that when I was younger,
I wouldn’t have wasted money on fancy
men’s colognes like Paco Rabanne.

I would have made it a point to hang out
where female phlebotomists did.

I would have worn short sleeve shirts,
or long sleeve shirts rolled up to my elbows,
to advantageously show off my alluring veins
as a surefire way of wooing them for their love.

Bob Boyd

I’m listening to an old love song where a guy is singing
about how he “can’t fight this feeling” about falling in love.

I’m thinking just go for it Man. Tell her you love her,
for God’s sake. Don’t be a damn wuss.

Then I have a reversal of my thinking. Maybe
this guy is just off a relationship where a woman
crushed his heart to pieces and he is gun shy
about jumping into what could be another train wreck.

I’m feeling empathy about his hesitation, and, maybe,
I’ve been there, though I cannot recall if I have.

But as I listen to the song further along, I can see
he’s already lost the battle to safeguard his heart
just by the fact that he has to make a big deal
out of his denial for a good three minutes in a song.

And I’m back to the starting point of just telling him
to get on with it and tell her what she already knows.

Bob Boyd

For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
the saddest are these: “It might have been.”

~ John Greenleaf Whitter

I heard that saying as a child and came to
experience the full meaning of it in terms of
missed opportunities with women.

Sometimes I’ve thought about these
women and wonder what might have
been.

Like the beautiful red-haired teenage
girl I danced with at a YMCA teenage
dance and was too shy to talk to
because I was tongue-tied by her beauty.

Like the lovely blonde-haired woman
who kept talking to me at an
outdoor event and I was too dumb to
realize she was into me. I wonder
what might have been with her too.

Like after I went on a double date
with a friend and his date, and
my date wasn’t interested in me,
and years later when I’d returned
home from the Air Force I found out
his date had had a crush on me, but
she was married, and it was too late
to find out what might have been.

I’ve had too many miss opportunities,
what might have beens. If only I could
do a rewind and start all over again.

Bob Boyd

Chris Hartonas, 40, and Raymond Vakili, 48,
well equipped mountaineers with years of
experience and considered two of the best,
vanished climbing Mount Rainier in Washington.
a mountain they’d climbed many times before.

Despite extensive searches by park rangers,
Rainier Mountaineering Guides, search dogs,
volunteers and friends of the men, and US
Army Reserve and helicopters, the men
to this day have never been found, as if they
vanished without a trace.

Another inexplicable 411 missing case.
Hunters, trackers, seasoned hikers have
gone missing under mysterious
circumstances too along with hundreds
of thousands of other 411 cases.

Some believe supernatural forces are
at play, and I can understand that,
given all the 411s with no logical
explanations about how they
went permanently missing.

Bob Boyd

Because of robberies, assaults on employees and trashing of their stores,
Dunkin Donuts stores are now encased in bullet proof glass.
Unbelievable it came to that, something you never heard of in the past.
It seems too many donut eaters in shy town have become more unruly and dangerous
than in genteel times of the past when a company didn’t need bullet proof glass to sell a donut in Chicago.

Bob Boyd

I like the saying expect the unexpected.
To me it’s great and practical advice.
It’s easy to get lulled into feeling
as if good times will always be good,
or as if everything will go along predictably.
I feel an awareness about how things can
change in a millisecond for the best or the
worst that you never expected is a good
awareness to cultivate, like the saying expect
the best but be prepared for the worst.
And the unexpected could be an auspicious
occurrence, like a new love coming into your life,
or having a deadly cancer that goes into remission.
The unexpected is different for me now, good or bad.
I see it as something new and exciting in my life,
regardless of the good or bad it can bring into it.
An old life can be that boring where any change
is an antidote to the less exciting elderly years
when the dreams are over and memories are
all you have left of them.

Bob Boyd

I once talked to an elderly woman who grew up in the country who spoke of older relatives who had passed away long ago.
She said they knew all about the herbs in the forest and the many remedies they were for and that this knowledge used to be handed down from generation to generation. But she said today that knowledge is forgotten.

I was impressed with her story and amazed that people in her family once had that kind of knowledge about the natural world.
I wondered how extensive that knowledge was and how far back in her family it has been known and how effective it was.
Her story reminded me of the cunning folk of the Middle Ages, and I would have liked to have learned that kind of knowledge or had lived at a time when I could have seen it in practice.

Bob Boyd

The days have gotten warmer.
The sun is shining brighter.
It’s too hot to leave the windows
closed and insulated.

After I free the windows of
the insulation, open them,
and pull down the screens,
the rooms begin to breath in
the invigorating fresh air, and
my skin and mind revel in
that fresh air feeling that
I had almost forgotten about.

Bob Boyd