Your fingers and tongue are yellow
because you’re eating buttercups.
I’ve read too many websites and books
the grass is now a helicopter.
I think about hobbies, handcuffs, suffocation,
a reflex comment or quick look
I will forget in seconds
that will tattoo itself on to your decisions,
and the man on TV last night
who got so close to the world’s largest tarantula
he coughed and itched his skin for 12 hours
then climbed out of a log covered in filth
with a smile bigger than the rainforest.

© Carl Burkitt 2021