If you say Goodbye a thousand times
I'd pray that once you say Hello
If you finish the day despondent and down
Then there, too, my heart must surely go

If you wander on hot coals tonight
And collapse in search of rain
I'd kiss your feet until they healed
And brand my own just to feel the flames

If your luck was lost and the white flag waved
And the water washed up your precious time
I'd double cross my own wristwatch
And you could borrow some of mine

If you cried and cursed when the hour is late,
Knocking graffiti out of place
I'd hold on till I loved the sound
And pick up the words till they spelled fate

If your hungry heart skips a mark
I'd envy anyone that you face,
I'd feel too young to have my say
But too worn and old to walk away

If the tide never deemed to return
And carried my hope to the end of the world
You'd be the lighthouse in my dreams
And still you'd have me after you, girl

© Copyright David Bosworth September 2023

You woke in a hurry twenty years ago,
An ancient spell made you grow
Tall now, and full, till it hurts,
The earth you stand on can feel your curse

Blitzing, you play with your bad hand,
You do all that one possibly can
A golden bliss is ever near
But no pride dampens the dormant fear

So return to the olden ways
The decent home, the tempered days
Stop to reckon: you shall go on!
And drift through those spectres wailing swan songs

Now unending rhythm of swaying leaves
Calls you to find the sun in ease
Tread carefully for lying underfoot
Is the gentle vision you idly sought

The whip-through-you wind beckons season's change
A fault in the plan, the gods' yearly exchange
Early to slumber and last to wake
Dear old friend, why won't you wait?

© Copyright David Bosworth August 2023

Nothing good can come of this
Noted the plain man for his soul
I lent over and distorted my frame
To put a coin in his bowl

On closer inspection his pullover
Flew out at me in rainbows
And his eyes glinted through a face that was hurried
But for all time, slow

We chewed the cud for an hour
My spineless talk criticised power
The rain fell mercifully
And he sauntered off to ***

I said I didn't like to see people unhappy
More to myself than to him
He said I was a 'good lad'
I said the little guys would win

Who is the benefactor
In a time-drenched street?
The hypnotised or the ostracized
The elephant in the room,
The mouse at your feet?

© Copyright David Bosworth July 2023

I tried to kiss your mind, in the way of inimical words I’d heard:
how a boy should begin.
With everything I thought you’d be, bubbling in convoluted thought, caught in the fresh oxygenated current
It’s real love and it shouldn’t go wrong.
I floundered, and you weren’t to
swim down from your opaline blue altitude.
Since you existed as a perfect reflection of your face, I
imagined the rest of you lost in the prism’s traces; let your mind’s eye
photo-reply a dappled understanding,
whilst we stretch out to grey misty conjecture above -
ever luminous rising depths,
to a love touched on
It’s real and it shouldn’t go wrong;
but if only for jewel chippings, I liked to kiss your mind;
to feel your arms round my heart one more time

© Copyright David Bosworth June 2023

However long the road seems
I'll always have you in my dreams
Fair and smiling, at garden toil
A tender heart, my father's foil

Trees grow and uproot sometimes
To float upstream to better climes
I'll buy yellow roses for my lover today
So you know we're both making hay

© Copyright David Bosworth May 2023

I wish I hadn't played Bowie that night
In your kitchen - he was yours after all
But Mum, I was only dancing
And at least it wasn't Wonderwall

I know you really loved it -
The incessant guitar and drippy vibes
I kicked a ball about too
And sang Teen Spirit once or twice

The funny thing is, the irony is over
I didn't self-combust or spend empty
Wednesdays digging old boys' graves
Or rent a fleapit from the 1970s

I did, however, sleep too much,
I wasn't as clever as I thought
I wrote doggerel and this 'poem' too
And mostly dreamt while the tough lads fought

Trouble is, you're not here to see
A human girl interested in me,
Or my driving round the old town
I'd pray you could, but I'm not aged three

You no longer have to iron my shirt
Or lend me a lift from school
You needn't change my room around
Or gently persuade me to follow rules

If angels can reach back down to Earth
You might wanna honour one of my wishes
I'm useless at hoovering - a real pet hate,
But I swear I got better at the dishes

© Copyright David Bosworth May 2023

Sleeping cats
And vanquished bats
Are all we're really about

You put on the TV
Pull out the coffee mug
I'll forget the rocker's shout

I loved you from the moment I met you
I never loved someone more
To feel feckless when I forget you,
To witness the whole planet roar

Tonight I'm a desolate crow
Only because you're not around
I'll do my best 'gainst my swelling chest
To be someone Jesus found

But I'll hand it to you
You fixed this clown,
Broken down and all a mess

You fetched me humility
With reproaching tranquility
Guess that's what I needed best

The past has had its time
It's taken its sublime low bow
I think of tomorrow without fear or sorrow
And live in the almighty Now

© Copyright David Bosworth April 2023

To whom it may return,
I know you as the man
who learned
me better than myself
And pulled me off this crooked shelf

I knew you as the tall hero from the back pages
Of books you lent that I never finished

But that will never diminish
The quiet strength I felt in you
In this one-time show, this crazy zoo,

There's a temperance
A certain devotion that you
Inspire
To all that's true
And higher

© Copyright David Bosworth July 2021

among the rolling hills
remark, the gift of life
hung like a lark
the truest view
the sky so hued
from a blazed canvas
none surely knew

disparate in the lush greenland
Italy swore! from God's hand
the wind-kind night
the old boar's plight
mauling about in the half-light
ready to make hay

© Copyright David Bosworth November 2018

I say goodbye to too many old friends
Their passing comes as the season ends
And I seek reassurance
For something in which there's no insurance
My handwriting changed
Guess it's to do with age
My X chromosome splinters
and maybe its the coming of winter
But what lies do they tell us
When all that's left is rigor mortis

© Copyright David Bosworth November 2018

Abounding,
a new suspicion.
Your history, like the sky's immortal smile in a sunbeam,
but you're not there.
I want you,
you were of the stars, and their pulsing radiance
is what mortal beings bask in, ignorance a final plea.

I search in the vanity of the town's conquests, every time it ever
won your witty reserve - search the gratitude of the folk, I search
their laugh lines for life's thanks
To see if they bettered you, are they worthy?
- some are dull as planks.

© Copyright David Bosworth August 2015

I was masquerading
as myself
In the garden, in February;
You'd had
your birthday party
a hundred miles away. You wouldn't see me
But I found a flat helium balloon
as I circled aimlessly around the garden.
Out of gas, it had landed, with a
tail of silver & purple party streamers.
A miniscule coincidence; as
I laughed into the fervent air,
the cold wind was no longer gusting.

© Copyright David Bosworth August 2015

It's imperative to me to believe the universe has a centre, well, the Milky Way has one.
Solar System, too
What if, what if
there is no centre to anything and it's tragic the Sun has to think for the planets - elastic bands, floating soap bubbles in a bath

© Copyright David Bosworth December 2014

And just to prove a matter of fact
suggest love to everybody you find___

© Copyright David Bosworth December 2014

Now is the burden
Then is rumination
Ruination of burrowing into a psyche that didn't care
Looking out for a joker who wouldn't breathe fresh air
Much obliged to
   not say

© Copyright David Bosworth December 2014

Images ... essential
Undulating greetings, precipice and a giddy orbit
sunset rhythm

© Copyright David Bosworth December 2014

The imaginarium speaks for itself
It isn't a rough & rumble place
                      and inferno
                               or a monastery
but  
       semblance of poetry
                         slice of junkfood

     - escapologist

© Copyright David Bosworth November 2014

paying for its lust

for the bricks turned to dust

a vine was brought down.

severed low; the top half browned, and died

we pulled it from the wall

lawn-mowered half the leafy carcass

dragged the other half to a funeral pyre.

I recall one tender limb was encroaching on my bedroom

spiny green fingers playing a patient game with the curtains

it’s penitent now, much nearer the ground

© Copyright David Bosworth March 2014

I’m fed up with Prague, Paris and progress

It’s because I feel like a lonely boy.

I could sweep aside the art and crafts for the day,

pick up my manlier toys,

in an hour of need.

~

Years later I may grow up,

guns in hand.

Yesterday’s fissures show up honourably

on TV, and I may one day be called to fix small arms symphonies

in lands where tyrants trail newly won streets with

glistening gold-plated depleted uranium hypocrisy

~

If they should come close to hurting you, which I could never bear

With titles and a message, or anonymously

I’d stockpile shares everywhere

and raise forgotten silos, for you

in our hour of need,

What’s more, dear

this sniping threat …

I have learned we live more than exist

~

For brief respite we’ll hire those brave, gifted folks to close down this travisty

suspend the dream-merchants

so we can perfect our progeny

(permanence, is, after-all something)

in this, a dark hour of need.

Oh my darling if you would understand just what it takes

to cling on to that last noiseless sigh of power,

to be devoted to all

which will revoke all the old failings

which will enable a better way of equipping

someone to watch for us, with both eyes wide,

as the lesser hand counts round, and again

and inevitably strikes
war

© Copyright David Bosworth March 2014

Sooner or later

you find yourself in one room

just one.

In the middle of the morning where the moon never sets:

it’s not perdition

You think you’ve scaled a gloomy height,

And you’re waiting on a mystery beauty

No you don’t need a friend

a hundred thousand, they’ve done it all before,

They lifted kings upside down, rose up out of craters, shook down God

it’s that sparkling fat chance amidst the hour of rapid eye movement

Turn bad to good, they say, emotive as a breeze-block

Dream better somethings up, reach backwards to someone that felt.

Well it’s your problem

© Copyright David Bosworth March 2014

so

maybe it’s hard

once you’ve heard and seen pearls,

When the refreshing waves have

moved you far

and the sights are no longer there,

Think again

© Copyright David Bosworth March 2014

We all like drastic changes, from time to time

Something makes us portend to the calamitous or the sublime

A guess away may be that coveted flame; an estimate later, somebody

you’d forgotten again

Solitude calls us to render a demand

A stone’s throw to the cosmos might be illicit or truly grand

In a sentence, there’s so much love out there it’s worth the wait

Yet in a manner of speaking, our heart tells us when it’s too late.

So, risk again,

I shall leave it there.

© Copyright David Bosworth March 2014

I would like to hold an Asda Memo pad in Fleet Street
I would like it if, in the process of being a low-priced tomato
I were stepped on
and really assured that the real-estate in which my squishing had occurred in - would grossly swell in value
Seen as my squashing had occurred.

© Copyright David Bosworth March 2014

That idle word 'impossibility'
That lurking creature like a ghastly curtain of Dark dripping
with vibrant green slime
When success is bright and vivid and light
Why give in,
When to win is so right?

© Copyright David Bosworth March 2014

I hope too much
It is such
that we live optimistically but for the sake of a headache
I seem intrinsically flawed
And maybe I'm too bored
for modern ways
and modern greats
I'd sing all night if I had the pace
But way down low - you know where feelings never grow
You'd find me, reading a book.

© Copyright David Bosworth March 2014

Can you ask someone to love you as
they lead you down gentle paths
Guided by sensations you know exist;
Sometime long ago, neglected to ask?

Who couldn't have fraternized with the girl
Of dark look and sultry eyes ?
But for a life I mis-created ...
Struggling in circles to weave new ties

Sweet encroaching lust awakes you
and erases dust
You seem to think lazy -
The terror is gone, so many miles away love
might have
stolen the air of wintry haze

Hell, God knows I was feeling insecure
And for what to come, nothing more?
Sometimes, wavering self-respect
And past tribulations
you'd rather forget

© Copyright David Bosworth January 2014

i wrote some songs
told them one by one
gave them silly names
what's the
point
some are as long as the delay
in the day
of an un-expectant mother.

© Copyright David Bosworth January 2014

Life's cruel chess game
Finds foes for you in sand grains
And I'm sitting here a shivering wreck and all I
can think about is the nape of her neck

My hand involuntarily flinches
And I wonder if she's, too, thinking
''his hand ..I want to feel his hand''

but all assembled various gods
may have bizarre, differing plans.

© Copyright David Bosworth January 2014

I'm sorry to you
I would have been the captain of your heart
I would have walked moon-shone nights to see the top of your head doused with stars
But love is like delicate strings, managing to hold together the heart's parcel
In transit, through all the imaginings and well meant confessions
On a road never realised
On a thought that barely should have been whispered
I loved you, and my love wasn't fearful
But,
hallelujah I met you
And to my almost-lover, I forget you

© Copyright David Bosworth January 2014

I'm too much of a pollutant
for her love
Yes I'm scraping off into this recess
the residue off this past harm
it doesn't hurt, there's no blood
It's employing a sudden dusty wisdom to break down
and demand why God isn't around
to lift a ******* to the stars
I suppose doses of others' spirituality is dependent on the belief
that their god is mine
When everyone needs relief
ultimately it's a sham. But a part of me likes others to tell me what I am
-
Stone is stone
but it grows heavier if muscles waste away
It's sometimes, that fear of death catches us before old age
Drag me through the dirt, this knot around my soul
Irritate my pores with the shred of lost control
Imparted to me, is no hierachy to which
I'm bound, when I've found free ground

© Copyright David Bosworth January 2014

She must get offers all the time
Wishes from the bottom of hungry hearts:
"will you be mine?"
She looks the part, a million times over
Chances are a million, of being her lover
Try to stay detached, let love be a thing apart
From her immaculate face
Shatter it in your memory, like some phoney art
While she forgets
all your lonely praise

© Copyright David Bosworth December 2013

If you are the sun
I'm the grass far below
Awake every dawn with many miles to grow

If you were the sea, I'm the ocean floor
Aware of your presence, oblivious to white shores

And you are a dancer, Your marks in the sand
Your laughter's a lighthouse
To the shipwrecked and ******

the old stone washes up
and reminds me - I should hold on
The world's still calling me
with a familiar song

© Copyright David Bosworth December 2013

She stands at the bottom of the garden
a smile of dainty goodness smudging her chin, and a bouquet of
somethings cradled in her white arms
and she's a statue
There must be a still wind coming from the west
well,
I'd forgotten the sound of Voice
until now, when dinner wafts me in simply
~
there's an external source across my senses;
I only get so far before habit breaks the adventure
and I know the shrillness of my bark arouses the deity from her somnulence
I feel blessed, then put the silly escapade down to dreaming
But although I get something for nothing, she, who stood laying clothes in parallel stacks
Recounting songs from a larger world, to me
perhaps only belongs there now

© Copyright David Bosworth August 2013

I feel completely soulless bar a few bars of an echoey song funnelled
-

© Copyright David Bosworth August 2013

sundown
blend to bed
harsh plastic, things are undone in that interval called 'growing up
for piano turned to lines of wire
from love for you - wish me up a white lie   & forget everything we ever told ourselves
about us
-
the calmer aspects of the world
tell us to swim deep in our uncertainty tonight
the saner prison we were never aware
or obliged to
sometimes it wouldn't even receive a curt nod
-
so needless to say, fragile thing, when they wake you
from trespassing out on the moorlands
with your brain in tow or
gold beneath your feet aglow
a worldly & shaken grin may be enough
but I'd like to know you'd   been laughing

© Copyright David Bosworth August 2013

At trees reunited or the Great Timber-yard in the sky
There are certain branches
who remember the incisions made
to fell their growth.
spurts & seasons,
and the wind rustling
through imagined leaves of
appendages long gone

All the gunge
symptomatic of sap coagulated
won't replace the
holes in the sky

© Copyright David Bosworth August 2013

and i would paint a big sky
but nothing's changed

© Copyright David Bosworth August 2013

no me neither

© Copyright David Bosworth August 2013

nobody told me
I was
I just made it up
It's far too easy to be comforted in your own
..****.. you know what I'm getting at
So strum a guitar chord
That sounds like someone swore
And                                                  lookin­g upon the curved silver lining of that barren orb..I'll wait for
you

© Copyright David Bosworth August 2013

a love asphyxia
some thinking fabric in the universe . She's there. when you expect to be expected
In, or just dreaming
An emerald valve for the hurried, bloodied, sullied
happening
oh, to all of us - please let us be happy

© Copyright David Bosworth July 2013

The name stood tall, long, indifferent, but beautiful
He was equivocally terrified
But equally, at peace, at the sight .
She was an angel,
she was a transcript from a beautiful future
She held his fingers from a silk rope
Calling

Flabbergasted, you realise how simply wet around the ears you are

© Copyright David Bosworth July 2013

She wasn't what you'd expect. Raw sunlight
doesn't feel like that either

© Copyright David Bosworth May 2013

sun dyes my hair
(earlier)
While I was about to write some crummy
lyrics -
the clouds    perfectly between a tree & shed
& - my eyes took a photo

© Copyright David Bosworth April 2013

dozing-lightly,
Dog doing same
Black cat enters.
All froze

© Copyright David Bosworth April 2013

ants feel
surprisingly hard
under your
fingertips

© Copyright David Bosworth April 2013

War is a system. It is The System.
it is the means to keep people who feel insecure, securely tucked into a command bunker
Securely delegating their fears out,
so others who would rather plead insanity
Bleed vapidly in their leader's imaginings,
instead of war
who ever thought we had much, such in common?

© Copyright David Bosworth April 2013

Funnily enough, words never sound tough
In your mind’s eye, on the ones you love, or try
seeing it their way, but it’s always a vision for yesterday
Could you hold a match to what you always felt?
Is this the way good love’s furnace smelts?
fuel is good on time, any later
and white hot becomes empty mime,
_
The princes and women they keep
Made kisses work before rock wore down to dirt
And your world spins too, but so goes your brain
till you feel a little new, stay mellow, framed.

© Copyright David Bosworth April 2013

gold-laced
molten lava, dripping onto every,
all music
what is it about Bb minor
                                  major
what's surplus? a drum solo?
we tell the truth when it stops raining

& how could you/I turn off Debussy
when he's still learning to make do
in ever-glades of silvery dew
& weeping infinitesimal tears
into broad
piano
strings

© Copyright David Bosworth April 2013

Things will be different.
No one will lose their sight,
their hearing, their gallbladder.
It will all be Cat-skills with brand-
new wraparound verandas.
The idea of ****** will not
have vibrated yet
While back here,
they are still cleaning out packets of wrinkled Argentina.
But in the next galaxy,
certain planets will have true
blue skies and drinking water

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if she said it was okay to be short.
and she said sure it is

I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
you can do just exactly what you want to do
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph my letters
Sweetcakes God said,
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

Kaylin ''ought to know