Francesca Bossert Author

Beyond the Brim: where words crash, kiss and carry you
 
I find myself -
Finally! -
Beyond the brim,
My heart racing,
Lingering
 
In that delicious place
Where story and word
Embrace with abandon,
Rolling over and over in the surf,
Giddy with excitement,
High on possibility.
 
Hello! How are you? Happy Sunday - and yes it’s sunny here in Switzerland with a gentle fresh wind blowing down the Jura mountains behind me, and the white peaks of Mont-Blanc sparkling straight ahead, many many kilometres away, across Lake Geneva.
 
Yesterday I saw the most beautiful fox trot across the garden. He could have been cast for the role of the perfect fox in a movie: the ideal shade of deep red, a healthy, shiny coat, a lovely bushy tail with an immaculate creamy tip. He even looked as though he’d just been brushed!
 
I have about three projects going at the same time and I’m so excited.
 
Also, if you read in French - which I never do despite being bilingual, but never say never - and fancy something that will lift your spirits as high as Mont-Blanc, and make you smile and giggle and pray that it becomes a movie, please read Cecile Mury’s Paris -Hollywood, published by Flammarion. It’s a wonderful romantic comedy about a young journalist who is sent to interview an American film star whom she’s always had a massive crush on, kind of like if I was sent to interview Ricky Martin...who is also a film star by the way... and anyway, absolutely everything that could go wrong goes wrong. Apart from the fact that he thinks she’s as adorably goofy as Peter Sellers, which is what he nicknames her. 

It’s a delightful romp of a read that a friend told me about yesterday, and so I downloaded it to my Kindle and had to force myself to turn the light off and go to sleep last night. I intended to read it in a sun lounger today, but my Kindle ran out of battery, so I’ll have to wait a bit.
 
Coming back to my Ricky crush, I’m aware of the fact that it wouldn’t work out between us... Also also, I’m happily married. And far too wonky to have an affair! Haha!
 
In the meantime, I’m off to play with the protagonists of my next novel, which is why I could be a little quiet here for a while.

FOREVER FABULOUS

If I were elderly
I would not just wear purple,
But hot pink and turquoise and silver,
And buttercup yellow, too
In velvets, cashmeres, silks
And the softest cottons.
I would flounce down the high street
On my way to drinks with my friend Sabina –
She in orange or scarlet, or maybe, today, an exquisite emerald green.

Today, elderly me would wear turquoise and silver silk-velvet,
And sling a suede fringed bag over one shoulder,
Relishing how it bounces with the sway of my hips
As I flounce down the high street
To meet my dear friend -
Sabina,
Forever fabulous.

Today –
Holy smoke! –
She’s in a scandalous scarlet number,
Over-the-knee black boots with assassin heels.
Sabina forever has it going on.

She greets me with her mischievous
“Hello Madam”,
A beige-busting hug
And we order cosmopolitans,
Pester the DJ
For Abba, Blondie,
And a whole lot of David Guetta and Ricky Martin.

Of course, we have no time
For the scandalized biddies in beige
Zealously guarding their handbags,
While Sabina,
Forever her fabulous self,
Lets loose on a tabletop
In her scandalous boots
With assassin heels.

But wait a minute…
Am I elderly?
Today I delight in a wardrobe bursting
With colour and texture,
A swoon of hues.
I still flounce with relish
Whenever my hips are up for flouncing.

Sabina only greets me
With a mischievous “Hello Madam”
In dreams.
She left this world far too early
And now lets loose on heavenly tabletops
In an endless parade of little numbers,
Each more scandalous than the last.

Elderly, moi? Perhaps!
But I have Ricky in my hips,
Guetta in my veins,
And Sabina forever laughing,
Forever scandalous,
Forever fabulous,
Just out of sight,
Right by my side.

ESTEBAN MARAVILLOSO AND THE POOL OF WONDERS 🐈‍⬛
 
I know a wondrous place -
And I’m kind, so I share!
 
Early in the morning poplar trees
swim upside down in a pool of shimmering turquoise
kissed by pink powder puffs.
 
Golden hearts and bright pink flowers
float beneath graceful ballerinas
twirling in tulle tutus in pastel shades.
 
Magpies and finches discuss
the importance of worms
in a freshly trimmed olive tree
(they are experts on trims, if you need advice).
 
Meanwhile, a Spanish kitten
- named Esteban Maravilloso!
decides a low-hanging willow branch
is the best thing ever!
 
And me? I find joy in recording these wonders
in a notebook gifted by a beautiful friend
with a fancy pen named after a mountain.
 

DEAR MR MOON: PLEASE REMOVE IDIOTS
A Formal Request for Celestial Waste Management
 
Good evening,

I’d like to schedule a collection,
please,
Mr Moon.

 
Can you send some
Mummenschanz
To pick up truckloads of VNI’s (Very Nasty Individuals)
Or maybe just ask Scotty to beam them up?
 
I’m sure I don’t need to tell you
Who’s on the Nasty List,
Mr Moon –
Your
Main Man
Must have been making a
List
And updated it
More than twice
Because,
Well,
Seriously?!
 
What should you do with them?
I’m thinking a
Supermassive Black Hole
Should do the trick -
Without the melting glaciers, naturally,
This isn’t a Muse video.
 
One-way tickets, of course,
For the lot of them
As we’d all appreciate
Clear skies stretching out to the edge of
Forever.
 
Please note that this request is urgent and time-sensitive due to global idiocy levels.
 
 
 Lunatically yours,

Francesca Bossert

Snakes in deep oil slicks, they slither, they slide,
Smooth in Canali with dollar-sign eyes.
 
Professional swindlers, sadistic brutes,
swagger around boardrooms in toxic cahoots.
 
Malevolent mongers, sickos for sale,
immoral prowlers who belong in jail.
 
Felons who plunder, pillage and r**e.
Untouchable tyrants; it’s all theirs to take.
 
Snakes in deep oil slicks, oozing with greed,
they writhe in dark cesspits, bathe in bad deeds.
 
Snakes in deep oil slicks, evil, debauched,
They glide through the loopholes, rewrite the law.
 
Snakes in deep oil slicks, they’ll choke on their fumes,
because dangerous criminals are inevitably doomed.