My name is Bob Boyd. I’m 81-years-old, and I began writing poetry at age 76 after I had a blood cancer despite of years of working out, no smoking or drinking, rarely eating red meat, and no cancer in my family. I wrote my first poem out of gratitude to the infusion room nurses who helped save my life, and who were fun and actually made the treatments pleasant. My first poem was a amateurish effort, but the nurses liked it and posted it on a bulletin board in their break room, much to my surprise. This was my poem to them:
Earth Angels
By Bob Boyd
Dedicated earth angels helping the sick
Despite hard hours remaining angelic
Compassionately saving lives from dying
Never giving up on you, always trying
To heal your body with saintlike tenderness
Using precision, care, and benevolence
As surely as there is a number seven
There’s a special place for nurses in heaven.
Prior to this, I didn’t write or read poetry. As a hobby I wrote short fiction for a number of years, which I think helped me in writing poems. I graduated from writing rhyming poetry to free verse. Having been a rebel in my wayward youth and still a bit of a rebel, the freedom from the rhyming constraints appealed to me. I have written over 3,900 poems to date on my poetry blog: Poems by Bob Boyd. And I have a blog about Bigfoot: Bigfoot Poems, Etc. and My Poems With Pictures Blog
Feel free to use any of my poems as long as you credit this website https://bbpoems.com/.
P.S. That’s me in the picture above feeding extinct birds. And my thanks to Monsieur Frankenstein for his contributions in the sidebar of this website.
Bob Boyd
Below are some of my poems. I have to use excerpts because if I post the entire poems here that are on my blogs, it will cause Google to penalize me, and my blogs and this site will be harder to find on its search engine. Google doesn’t like the same content on two different sites.
This first poem is about my spiritual experience for over 50 years:
When he got initiated into meditation in Cambridge, MA
He heard a soft snapping sound in the center of his forehead
And his mind was flooded with bliss that lasted for over an hour
He felt as if he’d come home, the place he was born to be
He felt like he’d been a Hindu monk in a former life
Two years later, at a little over age 27
He’d had many experiences of transcendence,
Inexpressive bliss and profound peace
During every meditation spiritual energy
Rose gently from base of his spine to the crown of his head
Read the rest at Kundalini Rising
I step out of the apartment building I live in.
Giant bees swarm and buzz around me
As if I’m an intruder in their territory.
I see two of them mating on a step
Unconcerned about who is watching.
What the hell, have they no modesty?
Chidingly, jokingly I say, “Get a room.”
Read the rest at Hail Caesar Bob!
Through fires, smoke, and the stench of bombs, the moon was war-torn and blue.
Alone, dazed, shell-shocked, grieving, my heart was too.
My life destroyed, my mind numbed, my hopes shattered.
They bombed the hell out of my beautiful city and killed my Anastasia,
who bled to death in my arms in seconds, while I was helpless to help her.
My sweet angel, my love, who had accepted my proposal of marriage
before the bombs fell and turned our city and our love into rubble.
Read the rest at Under a Worn-Torn Moon
When night cloaks Greensboro Park
During foreboding full moon phases
The park grows eerie and silent
Before the terrors happen
Read the rest at Werewolf Prey
There are mystics
who say love is the way
to total liberation,
becoming one with God and
getting off the wheel of rebirth,
living forever in eternal bliss.
Read the rest at My Love
I was sitting at my computer listening to an old soft rock love song where a guy was singing about how much he feels for a woman and how much he needs her love when a stink bug winged its way to me and landed on my shoulder, and I heard him sniffling, and I knew he was in a bad way.
I looked at him and saw he was teary-eyed, probably about a stink bug woman that rejected him.
Read the rest at The Teary Eyed Stink Bug That Landed on My Shoulder
Never go to doctors
They’ll find something wrong with you
Stay away and you won’t get sick or die
For example
My granny was the healthiest granny on the planet
Bench pressed 200 pounds, repeatedly
Squatted with 300 pounds, easily
Ran triathlon marathons, effortlessly
Kicked the crap out of a psycho subway pusher in NYC
Read the rest at When My Granny Went to a Doctor
Home from the Vietnam War, two tours,
Wheelchair-confined, broken body, traumatized mind.
High school sweetheart wife waited through the
years, the tears, the fears. Cared for him,
stayed with him, loved him through PTSD,
Read the rest at This Is True Love
I saved a ladybug’s life today
It fell in my fish tank or maybe
It wanted to end it all. It thrashed
In the water desperately. Had my
Hearing been better, I probably
Would have heard ladybug
Cries for help.
Read the rest at I Saved a Ladybug’s Life Today