he liked to fish as much as he could.
he’d caught trout, perch, bass and more.
he’d caught so many fish he couldn’t keep score.
but one day after thirty years of avid fishing
he had an epiphany. he realized he’d been
wantonly taking all those fish lives for sport
instead of fishing for sustenance and survival.
what he had done amounted to no more
than a wasteful, selfish fish killing spree,
and he never fished again after that.

bob boyd

he woke up in a coffin
dark and terrifying.
it wasn’t a nightmare;
it was horrifyingly
real.

claustrophobic
he panicked
and screamed
and screamed
till his lungs
almost burst.

he scratched
the coffin frantically
in his crazed,
screaming state
trying in vain
to open it.

but the weight
of six feet
of freshly
shoveled earth
kept the
coffin hermetically
sealed and
the horror
engulfed him.

he panicked gasping
for his dying breath
over and over,
his heart pumping
like an overworked
failing piston,
and he mercifully died
of a massive heart
attack.

and he found freedom
from the coffin
as his spirit rose
out of the coffin,
out of the grave
and into the light
of the afterlife.

bob boyd

i kept wondering what ticked
inside her oblong brain
what the hell made
her the way she was
half crazy, half normal,
her brain short-circuited
her synapses
intermittently transmitting
her brain cells
sometimes fried
sometimes overcooked
one day she loved me
next day she hated me
i gave it a good year
all i could take,
my mind baked
from her split personality
her unceasing drama
her love hate
thing for me
and her hot and cold
temperament

bob boyd

those bastards the greys took my amie away from me.
they came through the walls. they froze me like a statue
before I could try to stop them from taking my love away.
somehow they floated through the walls with her,
and she was gone like the moon in morning daylight.
i have a horrible feeling they will never bring her back.
i was told they might be turning her into a hybrid.
oh, god how that worries me, the thought of them
turning my amie forever into a human alien freak.
it’s worse there is nothing i can do about it.
no way i can follow their otherworldly trail.
all i can do is pray and pray and pray
and hope those aliens come back again
and bring my amie back to me.

bob boyd

though i marvel at the ferocity of werewolves
under foreboding full moon nights.
and i love their dramatic transformations
from mere men to mighty beasts,

i prefer the aesthetics of vampires,
those magnetic, elegant creatures of the night.
i like how they are so debonair
and how with a mesmerizing gaze,
they can seduce even the most resistant beauty.

werewolves lack class and refinement,
uncultured, they are just savage beasts.
instead of wooing a comely lady
with hypnotic charms and enticements
they choose to tear her body apart,
like desecrating a masterpiece work of art.

and if you are a werewolf reading this,
you will get no apologies from me.
you are what you are;
i am what i am –
your worst critic.

bob boyd

he met bree through a spirit box.
she said loving things to him,
though she was disembodied
they hit it off, and he fell in love.
little did he realize the talks
were just in his receptive head,
a case of auditory pareidolia.

bob boyd

a playboy in his youth
had many beauties
his game got bad
in his elderly years
when he went bald
and his skin sagged
and wrinkled and
got aging spots
and he looked like
a walking talking
scarecrow and
even old ladies
in nursing homes
turned him down

bob boyd

falling off a tall building and
splattering on the pavement?

thrown bound and gagged
into a pit of poisonous spiders?

thrown bound and gagged
into a pit of poisonous snakes?

your life ended in the slow horrifying
grip of a giant python?

beaten senseless and thrown off a cruise ship
at night in shark infested water?

being slowly cut to death by a razor?

bound and burned out of this life in a raging fire?

devoured to death by starving hogs?

tied up and tossed into a pool
of bloodthirsty razor-toothed piranhas?

snatched off a shoreline by an alligator
and eaten chomp by chomp by it?

mauled to death by ferocious dogs?

savaged to death by hungry lions?

pray you don’t expire in any of these ways,
but if you had to, which one would you choose?

bob boyd

anatoly moskvin had a genius IQ
and spoke thirteen languages
claimed as a child he was forced
to kiss a waxed up dead girl.

when he grew up he slept
on little girl’s graves in
graveyards so he could
talk and listen to them.

he eventually dug up the
dead children, said they
wanted to be freed from
their imprisonment in the
caskets under the ground.

he brought them home
mummified them and
talked to them and
celebrated their birthdays
with them.

he did this in his parents
home, but they said they
never knew about it and
thought anatoly had just
built little dolls for fun.

due to his suspicious grave
desecrations on november
2, 2011 the police investigated
him and found twenty-six bodies
in his apartment and
in his parent’s garage.

anatoly was diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia and
sentenced to a psychiatric clinic
where he remains to this day.

bob boyd

fifteen-year-old Danny identified as a dog
his parents and his teachers went along with it
even when he barked too loud
at home and in school
he slept in a dog house in his room
he wagged his imaginary tale
his mother fed him soybean doggy bones
his gender fluid girlfriend Emma
took him for walks on a long leash
everything was grand until Danny growled at a pitbull
and the pitbull tore the shit out of him
now Danny identifies as a fire breathing dragon
and plans to scorch that pitbull into oblivion
once he heals from all the torn flesh and the bites

Bob Boyd