Cats in the Philippines
Have hard luck lives
No pampering
No petting
No fancy digs
Feral outcasts
Nobody wants
No veterinarians
No cat hospitals
No affection
No love
They prowl the streets
In search of crumbs
Bob Boyd
Thailand’s Sak Yant Tattoo Festival
An hour west of Bangkok
Sak Yant animal spirit tattoos
Administered by Buddhist Monks.
Tranced devotees run like crazed animals,
Growling and gesturing, newborn beasts
Through crowds of thousands upon thousands
To the front of the astonished crowds
Captured, restrained by handlers
Stabilized by the Buddhist monks.
Is it as claimed the cleansing of Karma
Manifesting as spirit animals
Or crazed imaginations run wild?
Whatever the reason, it’s a bizarre sight.
You will never forget once you’ve seen it.
Bob Boyd
Two Summers and a Fairy Tale
I knew you for two summers, met you at a teenage dance.
We danced to the song Sixteen Candles, and with each step
We became more enamored, knew we’d be a couple.
Teenagers we fell in love, planned to marry when older,
Vowed we’d be together forever, prince and princess, the fairy tale.
I loved you so much it was like I was living in a heavenly dream 24/7.
But when when the two summers became chilled by ill-fated fall winds,
You were untrue, and the heavenly dream became a heartbreaking reality.
The sun hid its tears behind darkening clouds.
The moon turned blue in the dismal night.
And I, heart-wounded prince, whose vow of love ever true
Couldn’t believe the princess killed the fairy tale,
And I could no longer be with you.
Bob Boyd
Four Young Girls from Birmingham
September 15, 1963 bombed to death in the 16th Street Baptist Church In Birmingham:
Addie Mae Collins (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), Carole Robertson (14) Carol Denise McNair (11).
I’ve seen their photos, read their stories – long ago,
Bright futures awaited those innocent, young girls.
Reading about them, tears fell. It was all so heartbreakingly sad.
Soulless monsters, the killers didn’t seem to care;
They didn’t seem contrite and ashamed, as they should have been.
Wondered how God could have let that happen, and in the sanctity of a church.
The only way I can reconcile their awful, unjust fates
Is that surely God must have needed four more angels in heaven.
Never forget those four young girls from Birmingham.
Bob Boyd
The Wooing of an Inscrutable Woman
What is it going to take to woo this inscrutable woman?
Am I going to have to crawl over a hundred miles of broken glass?
Or swim the seven seas seventeen times?
Or like a gladiator of old, fight off hundreds of lions in a coliseum?
Or scale Mount Everest ten thousand times?
Good God in heaven, what on earth is it going to take?
In an attempt to make her favor sweeter,
I think I’ll start with some chocolate mousse from Harris Teeter.
Bob Boyd
8th Century Chinese Poetry
I love 8th century Chinese poetry.
I even like their poets’ names like Li Po and Wang Wei.
They sound so cool and so exotic to me.
Those poets liked things like jade — in abundance;
They seemed to like it more than we like gold.
They liked oriole birds, and if you see one, you’ll know why
And there are eight species in the US and in Canada.
They loved the word crystalline, as in crystalline water.
In many ways their poetry is close to peerless,
Their use of imagery is phenomenal and sublime.
All of this amazes me because it was written so long ago.
And by that way, I’m not talking reading these poems
In Chinese. I know nothing of Mandarin, and I can’t
Speak Cantonese. Nor any of the hundreds of
dialects that are considered Chinese.
Bob Boyd
Coming and Going
Some come into this world suffering
all manner of medical conditions
out of the womb.
Most go out of this world suffering
dementia, cancers, other medical
conditions into the grave.
Why all this suffering? Where’s the love?
I swear by heaven above, if I were in
charge of the here and now, the
comings and goings, nobody
would ever suffer on the way in
or the way out.
Bob Boyd
Sacred Cows
In India cows are sacred
They clutter up the streets
But scatter like frightened birds
When the elephant god
Ganesha, the
Remover of Obstacles,
comes to town.
Bob Boyd
Down Home True Love
I never carry the torch, but I’m carrying a candle for you.
This poem is sounding like a Country Western Song, 🙂
And if you’ll come back, you’ll see I’ve still got
down home true love for you.
Bob Boyd
Luckless, loveless Old Man Lament
As a luckless old man ten unsteady steps away being in the obits,
I’ve given up on the ship I’ve waited for all my life to come in.
I think it’s docked forever in Singapore or at the bottom of the Bering Straits.
The only ships I see are those that always pass me in the night.
I sit here marooned in a beggar broke, loveless unshipworthy life.
Almost won the lottery, 10 million, but somehow the ticket got lost.
Had what I thought was the love of my life, Daisy Bobby Sue Mae,
Didn’t know she was half crazy and crazier about the monied life.
She left me when she somehow got flush with cash and bought
a BMW, designer clothes, diamond rings and a fancy pants gigolo.
I know what you’re thinking.
Bob Boyd