The smell of freshly baked bread,
an aroma so incredibly delicious.
Once you taste it you know it’s
far superior to supermarket bread.
The only problem is
it tastes so incomparably good
that it could make you fat
by gorging yourself on it
day after day after day.
Bob Boyd
She met him in a church
right after her divorce.
She needed a guy to
fill her lonely life.
He asked her out
and she accepted.
After that first date
she disappeared
and the guy she
met left town
to attend another
church service
in another town
to find another woman
to rape and murder.
Bob Boyd
twenty years of marriage
and three kids
a perfect couple.
church goers,
family that prays together
all the markings of
a perfect marriage
upstanding citizens
husband a mayor
wife a professor
but the romance
died down in their
twenty year marriage
and they both
sought other partners
and joined the ranks
of all the broken
marriages and
many lost loves
and left each other
bob boyd
Hundreds of thousands of men dead on both sides
in a war that lasted over ten years.
Nobody won. They called a truce. Buried the dead
and mourned them.
Built monuments for them and declared the
end of the war a holiday.
If only they could have had a holiday for
peace and never gone to war.
Bob Boyd
I’ve read some people claim we choose the lives we are born into.
I find that claim hard to believe. I find it fictitious.
For example, who would choose to come into this life as an aborted baby
or a person born deaf and blind or with a terminal cancer?
I could see people or souls choosing to come into this life
with tons of advantages and with the silver spoons of wealth
or with illness-free charmed lives and with beautiful faces,
beautiful bodies and genius IQs.
But who would choose to come into this life as a child destined
to be sold or kidnapped into prostitution?
I know a bit about the soul choosing lives theory.
Supposedly we choose good or bad lives to better our spiritual growth,
but I just don’t believe we have that pre-birth option.
And if you choose to one up me and say I just don’t get it,
I respectfully think you don’t get it either. Realistically, how could
you or I really know what happens before we are born?
You’re “belief” could be right as could mine.
Whatever the truth is, I hope you and I have
better lives if we have to come back here again.
Bob Boyd
She said we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
She said that so many times I wondered
if we ever were going to agree on anything.
The only thing she didn’t say that about
was when I said we were incompatible.
Then she said we can agree to agree.
After six months with her and her
agreeing to disagreeing I have come
to hate the words agree and disagree.
And if you think I’m being foolish,
we’ll have to agree to disagree.
Bob Boyd
In an instant
your world
can change
In an instant
your world
can end
In an instant
the entire
world
could end
In an instant
the nukes
could
strike
In an instant
a bad
decision
could change
the course
of a life
for the worst
Bob Boyd
he wakes up
hearing
birds singing
merrily
the sun is up
and shining
like never
before
the flowers
are blossoming
more beautifully
than he ever
noticed
butterflies are
flitting playfully
above gorgeous
purple flowers
it’s one of
the greatest
days of
his life
because
yesterday
he was
healed of
cancer
bob boyd
the water recedes
the tide is out
the tide of his life
has receded
it’s not coming
back in
he closes
his weary eyes
for the last time
and his life
is done
bob boyd
She shuffles down the street on a walker.
Her looks have become nondescript.
Aches and pains and medical conditions
assail her worn out aging body daily.
She pines for the past when she was
young and so incredibly beautiful.
Bob Boyd
Young people getting cancer constantly
in America now.
Many follow all the rules for
staying healthy and fit,
eating the right foods and
exercising daily.
Many theories have evolved
about this cancer plight.
It baffles me how with so many advances
in cancer treatments
and many fine physicians successfully
treating cancers everyday
that cancer still keeps spreading and
appears to be winning the war.
Bob Boyd
She fought the cold as well as she could
as it crept into her apartment day after day.
Because she couldn’t afford the heating bills,
she wrapped herself up in layers of clothing
which worked until the temperature dropped
below zero degrees and she began to freeze.
An old woman with thinning skin and sick,
she succumbed to hypothermia at age 86.
Alone and unmonied, she died because of
poverty and a lack of family or any help.
I believe this condition is not uncommon
among the many poor and alone elderly.
Bob Boyd
Marriage didn’t deliver what she thought it would.
At first it was exhilarating playing house with a husband,
but after a while it became boring and unfulfilling.
She felt trapped in a miserable relationship,
and she sensed her husband felt the same.
Tragic and sad so many marriages seem to
follow this same love forsaken love lost pattern.
Bob Boyd
His friends told him to stay out of the
place in the park after dark that
was known as The Triangle.
He went there on a dare in 2006
He went there on a bet that
he would never make it out.
He even said he’d camp there
on a full moon night to prove
nothing unholy would occur.
When he didn’t return the next day
people were not surprised that
The Triangle had got him.
They found his tent and his provisions
and his abandoned car with
no signs of him anywhere.
They didn’t know it was all a ruse
and that he was on his way to Europe
to escape his wife with a new life.
He met up with the woman from Russia
he fell in love with on an online dating site
and people still think he’s a missing 411.
Bob Boyd
He had an unsettling feeling
walking alone in the moonlight
along the paved path in
the large wooded park.
Then he heard the horrifying howl
and saw the huge wolf-like creature
standing on two feet and growling.
He ran like his feet had wings
at incredible fear-fueled speed
and didn’t stop or look back
until he was safe in his car
speeding away in the night.
Bob Boyd
She basked in lunacy.
She reveled in madness.
It seemed to suit her.
She wore it well.
Though her behavior
was often strange
and her manner
was often bizarre,
she wrote the
greatest poems
and painted the
greatest pictures.
In some ways
her lunacy was
like a God-given
miracle gift and
she became as sane
as the sanest
when she was
put on meds.
And lived a
good life despite
being fated
with what to
some seemed like
an affliction.
Bob Boyd
he used to listen to ghosts talking
with white noise on spirit boxes
he traveled to haunted locations
in small towns and big cities
eventually he started hearing
the ghost talking all the time
without using the technology
thy talked inside his head
eventually the talking began
to take possession of his mind
and he heard the ghosts telling
him to become one of them
he jumped off a bridge and did
now others hear him talking
with white noise on spirit boxes
bob boyd
always sweet at work
never an unkind word
nice to everyone
incredibly polite
different at home
mean to her husband
angel turned diabolic
poisoned her husband
to death with antifreeze
in the summer of 1973
bob boyd
he drove through his old hometown
that used to be like a patch of buildings
in the tapestry of greater Chicago
where crime was nearly nonexistent
where streets were never congested
the traffic had become stop and go
he saw thieves running out of a store
with bags of stolen goods
homeless people were everywhere
he got disgusted by the changes
he rolled down his car window
to catch a breath of air
and coughed from the smog
rolled the window back up
turned his car around
and beelined out of the city
never to return again
bob boyd
He heard a preacher on the radio say
there was no romantic love in heaven.
Maybe the preacher was right
but it saddened him to think that
romantic love wasn’t everlasting
in the heavenlies of the afterlife.
It saddened him more when he
realized the preaching radio preacher
may have been honest to God right.
Bob Boyd