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