She often wondered why she couldn’t have been born
Like her neighbor Jenny Lee who had everything,
Beautiful looks, a perfect body and oozing with charm,
Big boned, unattractive, and not acceptable to the in crowd,
She knew she was a better person than Jenny Lee,
But in the world she was born into that didn’t matter
If you didn’t have the superficial look and the right body.
Nobody asked her to dance at high school dances;
She was just another wallflower and she cried about that.
As she matured, she got over her envy and made do
With what nature had given her, and accepted her lot.
She also saw that with advantages come disadvantages,
And she made the best of her life and found happiness.

Bob Boyd

He never understood fans and followers;
Why they felt the need to follow others?
Why the need to fawn over others?
Did they not have enough self-value
To follow themselves and not risk
Being like numberless people,
Merely one of a herd of humans,
Mindlessly less by the need to follow,
Seemingly themselves not enough,
To be their own fans and follow no one?

Bob Boyd

Listened to the old song Luckenbach, Texas
Really resonated with it for the first time.
The things I see in the world today
Make me want to live in a Luckenbach, Texas,
Far away from all the unending nonsense
That I’m bombarded with everyday in the news,
A crazy world going crazier, spinning out of orbit.
Some say Jesus is coming back to fix this mess.

Damn straight super wish he would tout sweet.
But I don’t know if even a Godly intervention
Would fix this hellish, scorched-hot mess.
Some say we’re on the verge of WWIII.
Macht Nichts to me, bring it on.
At least I’d be nuked out of this
Haywired, lopsided screwed up world
But I’d rather go to a Luckenbach, Texas.

Bob Boyd

He said he was having a nervous breakdown.
He needed to get to the emergency room
To be sedated before it became full blown.
I was warned he was a lunatic,
But I had to help him just the same.
On the fast drive to the hospital,
He hopped out of my car at a red light.

I pulled my car over to try to find him
And get him back into my car.
Saw him in a park howling
And hopping up and down.
Ran after him full speed,
But he was faster than me,
And he lost me in a nearby forest.
Nobody ever saw him after that.

Reported him missing to the police,
But twenty long years later
After many searches,
Some with search dogs
And legions of volunteers,
They still haven’t found him.
And I often wonder how a lunatic
Can disappear so completely
And where he could have gone.

Bob Boyd

A wizened sage I met in Sedona, Ca.
Told me I could learn the mysteries of the universe
On the back of a bubble gum wrapper.
A skeptic, I guffawed. He smiled an indulgent smile
And handed me a neatly wrapped piece of
Dubble Bubble Cosmic Gum. I said, this is it?

He smiled and said open it and read it.
I opened it and saw nothing on the back of the wrapper
Until telepathically the words and the wisdom
Lit up my previously unbelieving mind, and I saw it all.

Then the sage told me to eat the gum
I did but after the first chew all the wisdom
Was erased from my mind, and the sage vanished
And I wondered if it had been only a dream.

But when I got back to Greensboro, NC, the
Bubble gum wrapper was still in my pants pocket
I tried to read it but it was just a bubble gum wrapper
With no wisdom left inside of it.
But I saw it all in a dream that night and woke
Up one with the universe, cosmically conscious.

Bob Boyd

Brian was a perfect husband.
Everyone said he was a good catch .
He and Cindy were a perfect pair,
But no one knew the real story.
Brian was controlling and
Physically abusive to Cindy.
When she finally left him,
Brian sent naked photos of her
To her friends, family and employer.
A week later Brian died mysteriously
With a shocked look on his gaping face.
The coroner declared it natural causes.
But Cindy’s witch friend Brianna
Is alleged to have cursed Brian
With a powerful black magic spell.

Bob Boyd

Regular straight arrow,
All around good guy,
Always a smile,
Always a handshake.
Loved by everyone.
Good time Charley
They all called him.
But Charley had
A deep secret.
He Carried a lot of
Guilt inside himself
From a long ago
Incident that nobody
Knew anything about.
He’d been sexually
Abused as a child by
His father a drunk
Who he stabbed to
Death at age eight.
And that horrible
Memory haunted
Him everyday and
Every night, and
He often thought
About killing himself.

Bob Boyd

The longer you live the more people
You see passing through this transient life
But at least it’s always other people and not you
Even when someone close to you passes through
It’s like a close call but it’s still not lucky you
Until you grow older and after a scare or two
You can no longer think it only happens to other people
And the dramatic, sobering realization dawns that
You are going to be one of those other people too

Bob Boyd

Checking out at Sav-A-Lot
Saw a cylinder pendant
Around the casher’s neck
Asked about it out of curiosity
She said it held the ashes
Of her dead daughter
Said I was sorry that
Her daughter had died
She said it’s okay
She is in heaven

Bob Boyd