A woman’s beauty is like
a candle

that burns steady and bright in a
woman’s youth

and begins to burn out as she grows
older

until, sadly, it eventually flickers
one last time …

and goes out forever

but I wish it could last forever
and didn’t fade like flowers

maybe it blossoms again in the afterlife
maybe women are beautiful there forever

regardless of whether or not they
were beautiful on earth.

Bob Boyd

I’ve heard about benevolent spirits
– usually deceased loved ones –

that have intervened with warnings
or with consolations

in one’s mind
or via apparitions

for example,

“Don’t go there tonight!”

and there’s a mass shooting
killing many people that night

or,

“Ask the doctor to run the tests again.”

and what was going to be an operation
is cancelled because the original tests
were inaccurate

and,

“You need to leave that man now!
He’s going to harm you!”

she doesn’t heed the warning and
he almost strangles her to death

I’ve never experienced anything like that
though I’ve seen dead people in dreams

and I believe sometimes ghosts or spirits
act like guardians.

Bob Boyd

The older you grow the more of your
life begins to disappear

as if some events never happened

your memory grows dim about
many of these events in your life

like memories of when you were a child

when you grow even older, it might surprise
you how many of the events have faded

and disappeared completely

erased from your mind
as if they never happened.

Bob Boyd

She wondered if he’d love her when she
was old and no longer beautiful

sadly he was gone long
before she got old

he cheated on her
she left him

when she got old and
no longer beautiful

alone, she never found
a man to stay with her

she didn’t have the luck
to find the right one

but it no longer matter
she had no desire to

be with or please an
unpredictable man

she was content being
by herself and free

she had enough happiness
in her religion

her church friends
and her God.

Bob Boyd

Recently, a random raccoon inexplicably fell
through the roof of a package store

and got into the liqueur

he drank to extreme excess, one hell of a bender
broken liqueur bottles all over the floor –

10 or more

streams of the liqueur spread all about
the store a chaotic mess

the raccoon wasted

drunk as a skunk, he passed out
face planted on the bathroom floor

apparently he has a drinking problem
that only a …

come-to-jesus moment can cure.

Bob Boyd

In the back yard of a house,
a man hung himself to death
from a tree

sometime later, a young
married couple moved
into the house

not long after that,
the wife went missing
was never found

until ten years later
when some construction
was being done

in the back yard and
a body was found
missing its arms

the wife’s body
killed by the jealous
husband

after that, another
couple moved into
the house

and felt a ghost
touching their limbs
when in bed

and heard the ghost
whisper the words
am I dead?

I believe it’s a real
account, but real
or not real

it gives me
the chills.

A ghost that appears
over and over

same actions each
time

as if trapped in a
terrible fate loop

that it cannot escape
from

is really only an
imprint of what

was a person
that loops continuously

while the person
that died

has gone on
to somewhere else

whether the grave
or the heavens.

Bob Boyd

It begins like a beautiful dream
that you could dream forever
but at some point it morphs into
a horrible nightmare you
want to end

if you’re at all introspective, you
wonder how could that dream
have become a nightmare

and at some point you realise
you’ll never be able to get that
dream back

and usually you end the
dream turned nightmare
forever

sadly, so many of those dreams
the ideal romantic partners
become waking nightmares.

Bob Boyd

If a butterfly has an awareness of time,
I wonder if its life of only weeks
feels the same as a human’s life
of years?

One thing I know; a butterfly has far
more predators than a human

birds, reptiles, amphibians and
some insects

essentially, we, assuming you are
human too, 🙂

have only other humans to worry
about killing us

so a butterfly’s life could
be less than weeks

whereas, a human has a better
chance of living a full life

except for predatory disases
that stalk and kill many of us

some of us living less days than
butterflies

and probably without an awareness
of time in those drastically
shortened lifes

in that regard, I believe
those that live days or

less than a few weeks
have the same lack of

an awareness of time
that I believe a butterfly
does.

Bob Boyd

A 19-year-old man in Brazil named Gerson who had
mental health problems and a love of big cats

snuck into a lion enclosure in a park in Brazil called
Parque Zoobotanico Arruda Camara (Bica Park)

in a video, I saw him climbing down a tree into the
enclosure and a lion running toward him

when he was four feet from the ground,
the lion leaped up and tore him from the tree

Gerson got up for a moment before the lion pulled
him back on the ground

and, mercifully, I couldn’t see what happened,
but there was no doubt Gerson was dead

my hope is that Gerson is in a heaven, his sanity restored,
and able to play with peaceful, big cats there.

Bob Boyd