If a vaguely familiar royalty-free hold music
started playing every time I bumped into
a friend of a friend of a friend
called Joe or John or Jeff or Joe or John or Jeff
on a train station platform or Post Office queue
or in the pub at a funeral wake
and we plunged into the deep end
of an oxygen-starved awkward silence,
I probably wouldn’t wish my brain and heart
lived in a different post code to me.

© Carl Burkitt 2020