I’m unimpressed with neo-impressionism art;
it’s just not for me,

but I must admit I’m impressed with the artist
Jean-Michel Basquiat who rose from a street

artist painting graffiti on city walls to a famed
neo-impressionist artist and succeed so much

he became incredibly famous. But, alas, he
died at the young age of 27,

but at least he lived a short life of artistic glory
and left a legacy of unique and lasting art.

RIP Jean-Michel Basquiat and kudos to how
eminently successful you became.

She’s Only an AI Image Generated Painting,
post-impressionist, but those eyes … those eyes.
Oh how they mesmerize. Oh how they mesmerize
me, as if she and her eyes were real.

I find myself thinking, wishing, she were real or
if she would become real in one of my dreams
some night, or be real when I die and meet me
in some candlelit, moonlift, romantic afterlife.

But, alas, it’s all just fanciful foolishness. Paintings
only come to life in fictional stores. And I’m just a
lovelorn, foolish old man with delusional ideas
about a post-impressionist AI created painting
of a beautiful woman.

But those eyes … those eyes …. Oh how they
mesmerize.

Bob Boyd

He climbed over the fence into the lion’s
den

and taunted a lion to come to him until
a huge lion growled

and started toward him. When he knew
he was going to die, he folded his hands

in the prayer position for a moment. Then
sped out of lion’s den up over the fence.

Luck was with him that day because the
lion didn’t pursue him and kill him.

Usually when a person climbs into a
lions’ den, at the least they get maimed.

At the most, they never see this world
again, having been torn to shreds.

Bob Boyd

You see a 70-year-old, white-haired woman get stopped
by the police for a tail light on her car that’s not working.

They have her get out of the car and, unexpectedly, they
put handcuffs on her.

You’re thinking, for a defective tail light? But you don’t know
the real reason she’s cuffed.

Twenty-two years before, and after two months of
marriage to her husband, back then,

she got romantically involved with his friend, who she
appears to have talked into murdering her husband.

The evidence is now airtight despite the elderly woman
or the fake friend of her husband not confessing.

What is not entirely known is the motive, but I suspect it
was boredom and a bundle of insurance money.

That aside, it’s heartening to see that justice sometimes
prevails decades after a case has gone cold.

Bob Boyd

But I cannot believe in one. I think it’s more
complicated than that.

And why would a person born into the world as a psychopath
be judged for something that wasn’t his or her fault?

Same with a serial killer.

Individuals who didn’t have a choice in what they were born
as and whose behavior was ruled by that from birth.

I think the same for most people.

And I think even the choices most people make are
mostly predetermined by the dna they are born with –

or blessed or cursed with.

Given those conditions, I just don’t think people
are judged or condemned when they die.

I think it’s more complicated than that.

Bob Boyd

When he died, he didn’t have a grave marker
because he fell overboard on a cruise ship
into a sea, and his body was never found.
And, far as I know, there are no grave markers
in the depths of a sea.
And even if he had died on land and had a
grave marker, he had no one who would
visit it. So even if he hadn’t died in a sea
and money would have been paid for a
grave marker, it would have been as if
he didn’t have one.
And with tens or hundreds or thousands
of years it’s like that for all those
who have died.

Bob Boyd

Last time I saw her
She left for India
To follow a Guru
Never heard from
Her after that
Nor did her parents
Her parents hired
A detective to
Find her but
He never did
It was as if
Mother India
Had swallowed
Her

Began seeing
Her in dreams
Her body soaked
In water

Her parents
Saw her in
Those dreams
Too

Weeks later
Her body
Was found
In the Ganges

The Guru ran
A death cult
And sacrificed
Her to a Hindu
God and dumped
Her corpse in
The depths
Of the Ganges

Police in India
Tried to find
The evil Guru
But before they
Caught up
With him
He walked
Into the ganges
And drowned
Chanting mantras
To his Hindu god

After his death
I saw her in
Dreams again
But in heaven
Maybe hate
Held her back
From going
There until
The Guru
Was dead.

Maybe her soul
Was connected
To the Guru
Until he died
And
She was
released

Bob Boyd

In a YouTube video, I saw a dog
excitedly leap off a boat and swim
toward a school of dolphins.

The video stopped just as the
dog reached the dolphins, so I don’t
know how they reacted to him.

From what I researched, it’s unlikely
they’d hurt him, and thank God
they weren’t sharks.

And I wondered if the dog saw a
shark in the ocean if it would
swim after him too,

or would the dog sense the
danger and his death if
he swam after the shark?

Personally, I believe the same way
he excitedly swam after the dolphins,
he’d swim after a shark.

Bob Boyd

When you get so old that your body
has fallen apart –

and you’re barely living.

When your body is wracked with pain
that painkillers cannot take away –

and every day you’re suffering.

Be grateful for death, the reliever
of all suffering.

Bob Boyd

The defender of the faith
isn’t defending the faith anymore.

It’s as if he’s defending a faith
alien to the country he rules.

Many of subjects have lost respect
for him,

and the faith he is now embracing
is hellbent on taking over his country.

And will end his culture and future
monarchies.

But the failed defender cannot see
this –

much to his country and its
peoples’ peril

Bob Boyd