She said I should try to publish my poems.
I said I don’t give a damn.
But why, she asked.
I said because I don’t give a damn.
I’m so old it doesn’t matter to me.
Besides no matter how good your poems are
after thousands of years elapse all those
poems are forever forgotten.
And no matter how how good you think you are
as a poet, or as anything
you too are forever forgotten
just like everything else except the
inevitable death of everything.
Bob Boyd
The death of a child
The death of a spouse
A sudden blindness
The murder of a child
The murder of a spouse
A debilitating disease
A terminal cancer
An end of life coma
Your body paralyzed
The loss of your mind
from a dementia
Your country being nuked
Your country being ruined
The cost of a chocolate bar
quadrupling in price
Bob Boyd
He liked to watch girly porno films
in a booth in Boston’s Combat Zone.
He relished seeing the naked women
undressing and doing erotic things.
Couples doing erotic things
were an even better treat for him.
He liked to get drunk and
smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes
while see the sexual gyrations
of the many naked women.
His lusting voyeurism led to
his fiery demise one dark day
when he passed out drunk
with a cigarette in his hand.
And the booth he sat in
rapidly went up in flames
And his life ended watching porn
in the seedy Combat Zone.
Bob Boyd
He met a beautiful woman on a dating app,
the most beautiful woman he ever saw.
She looked as good in person as in her photo
when they met for a date.
He took her to one of the nicest restaurants in his city,
but she complained it wasn’t good enough.
She flirted with the waiter in front of him
and bad-mouthed the waiter when he didn’t reciprocate.
He said to her, “I can’t believe you’re acting like this.”
She said, “That’s the way I am.”
Then that most beautiful woman he ever saw
became one of the ugliest women in the world,
and his date turned into an abysmal nightmare
that he couldn’t wait to escape from.
And he never saw that most beautiful face again
that masked a repulsive person.
Bob Boyd
She saw the hot air balloons in the sky
and counted a baker’s dozen of them.
She counted in baker’s dozens
because she really was a baker
who baked breads and pastries
starting at 4 am every single day.
Between rolling dough and
stuffing breads and pastries,
she dreamed of marrying a
rich man and traveling to an
exotic country in an air balloon
and having an exciting life
like the lives people had in movies,
instead of baking breads and pastries
starting at 4 am every single day.
Bob Boyd
Maybe they’re trouble
an embarrassment
a disappointment
and maybe a disgrace
but you have to admit
they add some drama
to what may be some
necessary turmoil in
otherwise dull lives.
Bob Boyd
My clocks keep ticking
kind of like my beating heart.
Pity the clocks will most likely
outtick my aging heart.
Ironically or maybe not ironically
my clocks have more time
than me and my heart.
They probably could live
hundreds of years and
still be ticking.
While my heart if lucky or unlucky
might make it to ninety and nine
and never beat again in this
dead body, far less reliable than
an uncomplicated ticking clock.
Bob Boyd
Everything was wonderful
They were so much in love.
They planned their wedding
for two thousand and six.
On the day of the wedding
before the thrown confetti
and the ribbons tied to
the honeymoon car
the attendees and the bride
waited and waited
for the groom and his best men
to show
but the groom decided he liked
the company of the best man
more than the love of his future wife
while he and the best man got insensibly drunk
until the groom sobered up and
got to the church after the bride
had ended the relationship with
the unreliable groom
and eventually married
a more punctual man.
Bob Boyd
Geese are flying in V formations.
Wolves are running in packs.
Salmon are swimming upstream.
Pigeons are flying in flocks.
Some animals, some fish, some birds
break the mode and travel alone.
It fascinates me that nature or whatever
creates some species this way,
in groups or alone.
Bob Boyd
he was a goodhearted ordinary joe
he worked the 8 to 5 for twenty years
paid his taxes, followed the laws
served in the military as a marine
married a good and decent woman
attended a Baptist church on Sundays
tried to do everything right like a good citizen
until a dangerous pedophile molested
and killed his seven-year-old son
and his rage made him maniac crazy
he executed the pedophile
by torturing and burning him to death
he got sentenced to a long prison term
and became like a caged wild animal
killed an inmate who tried to make him his bitch
got more time tacked on his prison sentence
escaped in 1976 and has never been found
bob boyd