she joined the military for love of country
and became a combat soldier in a death zone.
she saw others dying all around her,
one was her boyfriend of seven days.
she never expected to see and experience
such endless carnage, such hellish horrors,
and so many young soldiers dying.
her company got ambushed, most killed.
she became a terrified prisoner of war,
suffered indignities she never imagined
at the barbaric hands of an enemy who
didn’t care about the Geneva Conventions.
their tortures and gang rapes left her
broken, brutalized and disabled.
she got discharged from the military,
the high cost of her military service
incurable PTSD and haunting memories
of what the barbarians did to her.
and she spent the rest of her days
being counseled at VA vet centers
adrift the civilian life she never
felt at home in ever again.

Bob Boyd

Full moons had a strange
lunar effect on him.
He wasn’t a werewolf.
He didn’t go bat crap crazy.
He didn’t go temporarily insane,
Or maybe he did a little.
When the moon was full he
claimed to have lived on it
In a long ago former life.
He said the moon had been
Populated millions of years
Ago by inhabitants like him.
He did look a little weird;
So it almost seemed true.
And during those full moons.
He would talk In a strange
language intermittently
Unlike any language on
Earth, which made you wonder.

Bob Boyd

long ago he set out
into the unknown world
he left a family
he never felt happy with
too much drama
too much trouble
too many beatings
in his troubled youth
a stint in the military
changed everything
he saw some
of the wider world
and realized he didn’t
fit in with his family
he self developed
beyond his
family’s understanding
alienating him
more from them
sending him farther
into the world
and all its opportunities
to become
a less troubled man
and find himself
the lone wolf

bob boyd

outside my apartment
a bird on a wire sings
i don’t recall the tune
maybe it’s an oldie
i never heard of
but it sounds good
and I wonder where
that bird learned it
maybe it was passed
down from generations
like a family heirloom
maybe it’s sung by
those birds everywhere

bob boyd

nazi minions easily led
to hate the peaceful
innocent jews
and destroy their
properties and
beat them up
empty-headed men
easily led into
a dark night of
mindless infamy
shame on those
who harmed
germany’s jews
shame of those
who devised that
diabolical scheme
hail to the jews
the wickedly
consistently
persecuted race
who prevail to
this dark day
despite the
evil antisemites
who still choose
to hate them

bob boyd

He used to love hunting, bagging bears and deers
Every exciting hunting season.
Until he saw some of his kills in a nightmare.
Somehow they had guns and shot him in the chest.
He heard the sounds of the blasting guns.
He woke up in a cold sweat relieved it was just a dream
Until he suffered a massive heart attack,
Feeling like he had been shotgunned in the chest,
He barely survived the heart attack and never hunted again.

Bob Boyd

in dreams she first appeared
with her sweet murmurings
her arousing nightly caresses
i thought she was my soulmate
i thought I’d found her at last

but when we consummated
her darkness invaded me
like an infusion of demonic evil
and she sucked the immortal soul
and the mortal human life out of me
i became some dark something
what exactly I do not know

i cried and pleaded with god for help
but no help ever came and i wondered
if a god existed in my inescapable afterlife
in my tormented dreadful fate

you might wonder how i’m writing this
being dead and disembodied
i’m channeling it through a human entity
he goes by the name of bob boyd
and has no awareness of writing this
he won’t see it written here
he won’t see the dark evil nature
of my wicked succubus mistress
when she comes for him in the night
like me he’ll think she’s his soulmate
before she consumes his life and his soul

jonathan stanworks (1960-1986)

I spied her at the grocery store;
she’d grown old, fat, and gray.
I was shocked at what age
had done to her body and looks.
I was glad she couldn’t see me
I was glad I’d died and
become an invisible ghost.

we’d had an unpleasant fling
when we were sixties hippies.
I grew to dislike her intensely
even though she was beautiful
and blessed with a great body
in her long gone youth,
she was rude and crazy.
I hope I don’t have to see her
when she dies and becomes
an invisible ghost like me.

Bob Boyd

She never believed in ghosts
Until one began haunting her
First she heard its voice
Telepathically inside her head
Like an alternate frequency
Transmitted out of the afterlife
Then the entity exposed itself
A payback from the beyond

Husband she poisoned to death
Haunted her day and night
Tried to have him exorcized
By a Catholic Priest Exorcist
The prayers and threats failed
Just made his spirit stronger
Drove her mad and suicidal
Until she hung herself to death
On a tree outside her house
On a spooky Halloween night

Bob Boyd

A vampire jumped me and sang his fangs into my jugular vein.
Before I passed out, I felt like I was going to die.
Hours later I awoke traumatized and horrified.
I knew I had been cursed with the vampire virus,
and I hungered for human blood.

Yet somehow I didn’t have it in me to kill another human
or turn one into a vampire like me.
So I learned to draw my own blood and sate myself on it.

Remembering fictional vampire lore, I decided to look in a mirror
to see if I was there. I wasn’t. Not even a shadow. Not even a trace.
Desperate to try to end the curse, I grabbed the large wooden cross on my wall,
pressed it firmly against my chest and prayed to God
to deliver me from the curse. It didn’t work.
I thought about taking a knife and sharpening the cross
and plunging it into my heart, but I didn’t want to die despite the curse.

My girlfriend, Jana, knocked at my door. When I opened it she was shocked,
said I looked sick and had a pale, ghoulish complexion.
As I stood there eyeing her jugular vein I became irresistibly driven by a desire to feed on her rich, young blood.

I dastardly mesmerized her rendering her unable to resist my vampiric intentions,
and sucked the blood out of her jugular vein ravenously.
I had no qualms about what I did to her. My conscience had been annihilated,
and her sweet, warm blood flowing down my throat was supernaturally exhilarating.
When my girlfriend came to and displayed her fangs, we drifted into the night in search of prey.

Bob Boyd