Two times I’ve cheated Death
twice I’ve swindled Grim
but I know the day
is coming …
when I’ll be seeing Him.

Bob Boyd

I spy a little orange ladybug
clinging to my bathroom door

I think about scooping it up
on a tissue and taking it outside

but it is so terribly cold out there
I think it could freeze to death

I decide to just let it alone
to its own devices

I surmise the ladybug is safe
in my apartment, no predators

plenty of water and maybe
some miniscule food

I haven’t seen the ladybug in days
it’s warmer now

I hope it went outside the
same way it came in

and found a warm home to find refuge in
when the weather gets cold again.

Bob Boyd

Watching and listening to Maryanne Faithful
in a YouTube video

singing her break out hit
when she was in her early twenties
in the sixties

the song, As Tears Go By

my heart captivated by her youthful beauty
my ears enchanted by her voice

and I always loved that somber song

but now I’m becoming somber
because her youth, her great vocals,
and her beauty are gone

tears begin to well up in my eyes
because Maryanne Faithful
is no more:

December 1946 – 30 January 2025

RIP beautiful Lady, beautiful soul.

Bob Boyd

In a dream last night
I’m sitting next to a guru in India

what I was doing sitting next to
a guru, I have no idea

a crowd of Indian people sat
before us

I felt the guru most have
had some prominence

unlike Okie from Muskogee me
by comparison

a woman in the crowd asked
us what are the colors
associated with the spiritual path?

having no idea what she was talking
about and not about to make some
bs answer up, like red is the passions
white is the purity, et cetera

I deferred to the presumably enlightened
guru, thinking the colors were related
to a Hindu parable or something like that
which he would know

the guru rose to his feet as if about
to give us some pearls of wisdom
then he walked off to what looked
like a vendor’s cart and left
pushing it away

surprised, like the crowd, I wondered
if he were making something like a
profound Zen point by his actions

upon reflection this morning, I wondered
if he were a cigarette vendor like the
enlightened Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
and he was practicing spiritual theater
with his silence and walking away
with a cart, a more profound answer
beyond my comprehension.

Bob Boyd

True love evaded Brandon
for all his lonely life

each time he thought he’d found the one
it never worked out, as if he were cursed

until he found his soulmate at age 77
Sandy age 76

the romance lasted for an idyllic year
until Sandy got dementia

and gradually she didn’t know
who Brandon was, the long goodbye

Brandon cried a thousand tears
and felt cursed again

but still cared for Sandy and
took care of her tenderly till she died

when Brandon was on his deathbed
at hospice six years later

before his last gasp breath, he saw
something ethereal slowly unfolding above him

Sandy smiling and waiting for him.

Bob Boyd

After reading and hearing of Christ
appearing in many individual’s NDEs
Near Death Experiences
especially those of atheists

I became a believer in Christ

but not like you’d think

I don’t believe in “only ways”
as in the “we have the only way to God”
as some religions, sects, and cults claim

I believe as the Sufi’s believe:
there are as many paths to God
as humans have souls

I don’t believe you either go to heaven
or to hell

in fact, I don’t believe in hell
I do believe in different levels

in the afterlife, like rungs on a ladder
a Hitler is at the bottom

a good person closer to the top
the highest spiritually evolved at the top

however, through redemptive, spiritual work
even a Hitler can eventually get to the top
in my belief

I don’t know if it requires coming back
to this world for many lives
or if the school for souls is in the afterlife

I don’t believe in The Second Coming
if Christ was coming back
I think he would have by now

I don’t believe in the Rapture
believers rising into the heavens

I’m not about being a churchgoer
I would probably disagree with the dogma

once I was told as an old man who doesn’t drink
or go to bars, I should go to church to find a woman

but, to me, that would be like a sacrilege
misusing a house of God like a tawdry dating site

as for the kundalini energy that rises in me
one could think since some Christians mistake
it as demonic, Christ would probably shut it down

not so, it remains unaffected still rising upward
and I’m sure some Christian mystics experienced this
kundalini energy too but by different names

I believe in Christ as a Cosmic Christ
personal and impersonal aspects of the Absolute

I see my relationship to Him more like having
an ultimate guru but far more

and I believe when I die, I will meet him at the door.

Bob Boyd

He ponders how everything fades away,
time, material things, a woman’s looks.

Then he wonders if rocks are the
exception, if they erode into nothingness,
and it seems the planet will have to die
before that can happen.

And since rocks don’t appear to have
parents, or consummate, he wonders
how rocks are born.

He learns they come into being by
something called a rock cycle, and
to his amazement, they can live
millions to billions of years.

Then he wonders if rocks have any
sentience, and he learns about
The panpsychism World, the belief
that consciousness is present in
all things akin to what the Mahayana
Buddhists call the Buddha nature
in all things, sentient and insentient.

He doesn’t know if that theory is
possible, and, right or wrong,
he doesn’t believe in reincarnation,
but imagine if reincarnation were true
and all things, sentient and insentient,
would eventually reach an afterlife state
of eternal bliss consciousness.

He likes the thought of that, the
equality and the promise of it.

Bob Boyd

I once met a woman who said she loved seeing gore
in horror movies

In my head, I was thinking what kind of ghoul
are you to savor people being sliced and diced to death?

I truly believe you have to be psychologically sick
to equate gore with a visual treat

I further thought, woe to the man who gets married
to her one inauspicious day

no telling what a blood and guts, gore-loving woman
could be capable of

with one too many arguments aka verbal fights
he could end up sliced and diced on the kitchen floor.

Bob Boyd

A former beauty queen, a nurse
and mother of three
she shot her husband to death in Texas

I see marital homicides like this
all the time on true crime shows
one spouse killing the other

sometimes it’s for the insurance
sometimes so a spouse can have the kids
without having to go through a divorce court

sometimes there’s a lover involved
who is convinced to do the killing
conned into thinking
a husband is beating up the wife
or sexually abusing the children

sometimes it’s a mental health condition
where one spouse goes crazy

sometimes it’s close to justified
when the husband has been physically abusive
and will kill the wife if she leaves him
I see the wife killing this monster
as a case of self defense
before he kills her accidentally
or on purpose, even despite a restraining order

none of it makes sense to me
why fuck up your life because of another
unless it is in self defense to protect your life
like a battered and bruised wife
against a monster husband

and screw the life insurance
I wouldn’t want the blood money
I’d rather be poor and above being a murderer
I’d rather have my freedom than be imprisoned

I’d rather walk away from a miserable marriage
so toxic that one spouse hates the other
homicidally or close to homicidally

and one thing I have learned from watching
those homicidal marriages on true crime shows –

never be worth more dead than alive.

Bob Boyd

Unfettered, unvetted, illegals
pouring into Britain in the thousands
on boats from France
nobody really knows who they are
or what they’ve done

rapes, Pakistani grooming gangs,
knife attacks
many stabbed on a train
recently
harassment of females
and crimes increasing

social discord growing
collective anxiety as well
anger and rage erupting
the country on edge
a power keg near exploding

no concerns for public safety
no concerns for national security
thousands of patriots pissed off
and protesting

citizens being arrested and jailed
for social media tweets
police task force patrolling the internet
while crime increasing in the streets
police searching for tweets
the government doesn’t like

free speech in once Great Britain
being silenced daily
1984 in 2025

suicidal elitists destroying
the country
its traditions
and its identity

God save Great Britain.

Bob Boyd