Month: September 2026

Twice I’ve had near misses with
Death

once a murderous blood cancer
tried to kill me slowly
perhaps it

was sadistic and wanted to
draw out my passing
for its ghoulish pleasure

the second time, my heart
went a little crazy
electrically

out of sync with its
two chambers

and I was told by a doctor
I could die at any minute

medical interventions saved
my life both times

months of cancer treatments
pills and infusions

a pacemaker for the errant
heart

I don’t believe I’ll have any
more near misses

because either I did instantly
maybe in sleep

or if the cancer returns
I let it do its thing and
slowly kill me

rather than prolonging my
life any more medically

Bob Boyd

I worked with the elderly for over twenty years, and from my experiences and general observations of people aging, in my opinion, living too long can eventually become a losing proposition for most people: Your quality keeps diminishing; your body keeps breaking down more and more, like an old, worn out machine; you may lose the ability to take care of yourself; you could be sent to a nursing home, or you lose your mind, your sense of self, to a heartless, ravenous dementia.

And I believe there comes a point where being kept medicaly alive just isn’t worth it – along with the exorbitant costs, physically, mentally, and monetarily.

but in my thirties when I was a jogger,
I took a shortcut one night

through a small cemetery
a 5 minute run

and though I didn’t believe in ghosts
and saw none in the cemetery

jogging (actually running)
through that quiet cemetery
scared me so much

that I almost could feel
my hair standing on end

Bob Boyd

After listening to many accounts of people who experienced ghosts, or claim they did, on the radio program Coast to Coast and many other accounts at different YouTube videos and websites, like ghosts in light houses, I’ve become a believer in ghosts. But what I don’t understand, if ghosts are real, why would they haunt a musty, old house? Were I a ghost, I think I’d travel to many different places. I definitely wouldn’t be a homebody ghost.

By the way, here’s a poem about a residual ghost:

Lucy

Lucy was as fair a woman as a woman can be.
She passed from this life at only twenty three.
On the day of her marriage to Charles Porter,
She tripped on her wedding gown on a stairs.
She died when her head hit the bottom step.
Now she wanders day and night in her wedding gown,
As if still trying to get to her wedding that never happened.
I’ve tried to communicate with Lucy about going to the Light,
But she never seems to acknowledge my presence.
Perhaps Lucy is only like a film replaying day and night.

Bob Boyd

A woman takes a casual walk
in a park
a tree falls on her head and
she dies instantly

a woman gets off work at 9 pm
and is kidnapped and killed by a serial killer

a family is having a meal in a
fast food restaurant
a crazed shooter shoots
them and others dead

a man is driving at the speed limit
on a two-lane highway
a truck swerves into him
and he dies in the wreck

Oh how I hate the randomness
that makes so many people dead

Bob Boyd

I’ve read about so many cases where people die from random events through no fault of their own. Nothing they did to deserve their unexpected, unpreventable deaths. One could say it’s just Karma, but I think if Karma exists, it’s more complicated than that. I think a lot of things that happen in this world are just random with no reasons for them — like the woman walking in the park, killed by a tree.

The other day

I saw in a YouTube video
a long list of all the celebrities

I saw on TV and in movies
as I grew up

from childhood to my
teenage years and into adulthood —

who had passed away

most I didn’t know had died
and I got sad and depressed

that they were all gone

and that they and all the great
entertainment they brought the world

was gone forever

but it made me look forward to the
last day of my life when

I’ll be joining them

Bob Boyd

Though I’ve become a recluse and I enjoy my life, like in the poem I do look forward to the day I die and join those icons and people I knew who are now on the other side. I’ve lived a long
enough life and getting old has many downsides for most: medical problems, medical examinations and seeing doctors as your body breaks down and you become more likely to have medical problems.

I see death as a release from all that, and I’ve read in many NDEs that on the other side in spirit you are young and vital again.

So, Death bring it, I say. 🙂

He was seventeen
handsome as a movie star

had a near supernatural
ability at playing pool

he could run racks
for hours without missing

and I never saw him lose
even when he played

the expert pool playing
old timers

he also had tons of charisma
and seemed a born winner in life

but an auto accident ended all of that
before he reached age eighteen

but maybe he won at living too
and got to a glorious existence

sooner than most of us

Bob Boyd

This is a true poem. The young pool shark was as I described, and I couldn’t believe his life ended so soon.

Decades later, with a lot of knowledge about near death experiences, I believe for most the afterlife is as many NDEers describe it: Incomparable, unconditional love, more real than this existence, and our true home that once experienced you want to spend forever there.

I believe those that are not the most, like a Hitler, go to a lower plane of existence and do a sort of penance there but eventually ascend the planes like climbing up the rungs of a ladder and reach what the NDEers call Source, the incomparable unconditional love etc cetera.

“Look forward to your transition, it’s the first time you will experience unconditional love.”

Elizabeth Kubler Ross

and I hope you are somewhere
heavenly

in the afterlife

I hope you are peaceful and
happy there

without a care

if there’s romantic love
on the other side

I hope you found it there

Bob Boyd

This is a brief poem about an ex-wife who died in her early fifties about twenty years after we got divorced. She was a smoker, and I fear her early death was related to that, but I don’t know for sure.

She was probably the nicest woman I’d ever been involved with, but I am an introvert and cerebral. She was an extrovert and, though intelligent, not interested in deeper ponderings as I am.

The everwidening gulf between us happened because she had gotten a new job and met many new girlfriends and began hanging out with them so much that I was home alone too much.
And, for me, the marriage became more and more lonely together, which eventually led to a separation and a divorce.

But that aside, I was sad to read in her online obituary that she had died a few years after her death. I had just done an Internet search to see if I could find her, never expecting she had died.

Bob Boyd

are not about monsters

crazed ex-girlfriend

demons or night hags

or being in hell

they are about working again

I have been retired going on 3
years now

and

to have a dream where I’m
working on a job again

is like a nightmare to me
maybe because it’s like

losing the freedom of not
having to work any more

that I have and cherish

Bob Boyd

It surprises me that I feel that way when I wake up from those dreams. When I worked, I was extremely driven and never wanted to retire. Initially I had planned to work till I couldn’t work any more because of an infirmity, my mind too dulled by age, or by death. Yet, once I was retired I enjoyed the freedom of not being under anyone’s control – no bosses over me – that I knew I could never work again. Now I work for myself writing poems everyday as a hobby. And I kinda feel like I did in my twenties, free and happy.

A man named John Rhodes
aka CriptoHunter

claims there are creatures

he calls reptoids

He says they have

scaled skin
slightly large craniums
two slits or almond shaped eyes
ears like small holes
flat wide nose
lipless mouths
muscular bodies
4 to 6 digits on each scaled hands
some with tails
some with no tails
heights from 5 ½ to 9 feet

If real, they don’t seem hostile
more like ET than klingons

but terrestrial instead
of extraterrestrial

It’s all quite fascinating
and either good sci fi
or incredibly real
You can read more about it
at The Reptoids Research Center

Bob Boyd

I heard of reptoids while listening to Coast to Coast this morning, and found John Rhodes quite likable, seemingly extremely knowledge about all things paranormal, and he seemed legit. But I have a hard time believing in reptoids. However, real or unreal, true or false, I find this fun and fascinating.

A guy I used to work with
said he only
slept with prostitutes

he had no use for
having a relationship with
a woman he could
have real love with

I found his choice
surprising and empty

and asked him why
he didn’t choose to be
with a woman

he could have a romantic
relationship with

like I looked for and most
men desired and searched for

he said, “You get the drama.
I get the sex without it, and
overall I pay less for it.”

I could see his point and
thought about the benefit
of the no drama

but, hell, I couldn’t see the
empty sex without love.

Bob Boyd

I actually knew a guy I worked with who was like this. He just wanted sex without any commitments and, as he said, without the drama. Though I could somewhat see his point, it seemed like an empty life with empty sex and never the joys of romantic love. But, alas, sometimes with romantic there is a lot of drama and sometimes there is a broken heart. His heart, far as I can see, would never be broken — unless he fell in love with a prostitute who rejected his love.

They seemed like
normal young men,
the Benton brothers

church going, charitable,
and affable

they fooled everyone
when it was discovered

they earned their living
secretly

digging up the dead
illegally obtaining
cadavers

for doctors and
medical schools
in the 1800s

but after 10 years
their employment
ended

when the father
of a deceased daughter
whose body they dug up
and sold to a medical
college

shot them both dead

Bob Boyd

This poem is fictional. As I was thinking about which way it would turn out, it occurred to me that a relative of one of the people whose body the grave robbers had desecrated, could seek lethal revenge.

I had struggled to find an apartment
to rent in a city during the start
of a college season

After a frustrating and
relentless search with
few available apartments

I finally found one that
I rented from two lovely women
who were lesbians

when my ex saw the apartment
it wasn’t good enough for her
and she didn’t like the idea
of renting from lesbians

she left pissed off and went
back to live with her parents

I called her twice to try to
work things out

but each time her mother
claimed she wasn’t home

I said to her mother, “well
I guess that’s that,” and
that was the end of a
quarrelsome relationship.

Bob Boyd

This is based on a true story. It shows how a single flare up sometimes can end a relationship, especially when the man had tried his utmost to find an apartment at a time when apartments were scarce only to have his girlfriend make a scene about it. Worse, for three days she refused to answer his calls until, exasperated and angry, he said, screw it, and the relationship was over.

I knew it was risky
getting involved with her

but damn! she was so hot
I couldn’t help myself

I should have been more
circumspect

I should have been far
wiser

and I paid a high price
for my indiscretion

my wallet and my
beloved red Volkswagen convertible –

stolen

Bob Boyd

This is a Fiction piece, but such things happen in this unpredictable world, and many have gotten seduced by beauty and burned by it. Worse, people can’t always see what they are getting into in the throes of first loves or infatuations. The absolute worst is when this happens to a woman with a charmer who turns out to be an abuser.

Jennifer was a Wiccan
I was a believer in Christ
but somehow we
made our love work

we met in the middle
of a crossroad
of mutual respect
and love

until an evil warlock
used his dark arts
to steal Jennifer
away from me

and though I prayed
hundreds of prayers
petitioned scores
of saints

sought the powers of
white magic wiccans
exorcists and healers

I never got Jennifer back

Bob Boyd

Another fiction piece that started as a kernel of an idea and blossomed into a story with an unhappy ending, and the good guy left hanging unable to get his love back. It reminded me of cases where a nice girl leaves a good guy for a bad boy, sometimes with no end of suffering for her, and the nice guy vowing to treat women like shit instead of like the nice guy he is. And probably won’t be able to be an SOB to a woman ever.

I had a job once hauling building
foundation forms

I liked the exercise
but it wasn’t the right job for me

I worked some construction too
but that was a worse fit

the worse fit of all was stocking
shelves in a grocery store

too mindlessly repetitive for me
found zero satisfaction it in

worked once part time as an
office building cleaner

wasn’t the right fit for me
either but I liked the work

the best fit for me
that took fifty years to find out

was working helping others

Bob Boyd

This poem is about my struggles to find a job that was the right fit for me, and sometimes, perhaps often, getting stop gap jobs until I found the right fit. I didn’t find that right fit until age 50. I was working in retail jewelry and came to a crossroads where I felt compelled to find a job where I could make a difference in this world by helping people for a living.

With no experience or education in Human Services, I got a state job as a Veteran’s Rep that I later parlayed into a job with a nonprofit helping the elderly for a living. And that was the perfect fit, which I worked at for over 20 years until I retired.

The sex was wonderful
he couldn’t get enough
of it

she couldn’t either
but it wasn’t sufficient

to keep their marriage
and them together

she had become
an incurable extrovert

had to be out with her
girlfriends nearly every night

leaving him alone at home
lonelier and lonelier

until despite the great sex
and the once good times
he had to leave her

but decades later
once in a while he remembers

how good the lovemaking was
and how great their love was

until she became
so much of an extrovert
that she neglected him
night after night

and wanted him back
when he left her
forever

Bob Boyd

I’m sure this is a common tale that many others have experienced. Despite when the bloom is on the rose and everything is heavenly, and the sex is mind-blowing, when things start to go south even the best sex in the world is not the glue that holds a ill fated relationship together.