I’m expecting a pay rise at my job
or at least a free massage at lunch
because I just scored a backwards,
overhead goal at volleyball.

I might try walking on water later.
Today could be the day I write the perfect poem.
You should see the size of my nephew’s eyes
because I just scored a backwards,
overhead goal at volleyball.

The all inclusive buffet will cheer me tonight.
Profiteroles will thank me for choosing them
and the sundried tomatoes will blush, no doubt,
because I just scored a backwards,
overhead goal at volleyball.

The keeper was six-years-old, give or take.
Old enough to brush his own teeth
and dust himself down from lifelong humiliation
because I just scored a backwards,
overhead goal at volleyball.

Carl Burkitt 2026

My son’s miniature footprints on the beach
make me want to write awful poetry.

Something about time moving forward
how many moons he has left to see

the power a grain of sand can hold
the miracle of a skimming stone

the infinite danger of the ocean
the infinite beauty of the ocean

how hand-holding will soon disappear
like the tide washing up miniature footprints

how waves don’t give a shit about all that –
they just dance knowing that they’re alive.

Carl Burkitt 2026

I’m queuing in the Manchester Airport Terminal 2 Pret because I want my life to be a Tim Key poem. I’m waiting for my turn to ask if they sell decaffeinated tea despite the hands on the clock boasting it’s four in the pissing morning. The chap behind the counter has a quiff fit for a chat show. He’s singing the orders to the hundred baristas behind him and quipping at the knackered customers. This shortbread-jawed bastard is not reading the room. When I reach his counter and ask if they sell decaf, I’m met with a Family Fortunes UH-UH from his poisonous white grin.

Carl Burkitt 2026

Brussels Airport has an animal
relief area – a chance for dogs
to defecate on squared astroturf.
 
I can see it from the border control queue
I’ve been trapped in for 30 minutes.
The 8am, lime-green fleeced worker is
 
convinced I will make my Munich flight
in 10 minutes. My bladder is woofing,
wishing I was born with a fluffy tail.
 
Carl Burkitt 2026

My nephew is drunk at my mum and dad’s
50th wedding anniversary garden party.
I’m drunk too. That’s why we’re sliding jam
from the afternoon tea into pints of vodka

in the impromptu shed-pub his dad made.
My nephew is three years older than you were
when you died in an English country lane.
His hair boings with life as he tells me

all about travelling with his mate next year:
changing Vancouver hotel bedsheets
with his 19-year-old fingers, learning to ski,
introducing both new and old personalities

to the people he will definitely seeing for ever.
I imagine you falling over putting on salopettes,
flying headfirst into a cluster of fern trees,
sticking around long enough to meet my son.

My nephew necks a tap water. In 30 minutes,
Dad will drive me home down an English country lane.

Carl Burkitt 2026

How do you keep a son knowing the world can be swell?
For him to always notice how flowers are kind
or the way that pumpkins are not afraid
to grow into their congenial orange.

We want him to look at the sympathetic sky,
understand that rain clouds can be amiable,
slow down to watch an agreeable butterfly.

It’s selfish to want time to stop for me
to gobble up how he runs on cute grass
or points out the crunch of a charming leaf,

but if you are a pleasant grandfather clock
or a fine pocket watch, prepare to be punched.

Carl Burkitt 2026

My phone reminds me of the time
I sellotaped my foot to my head
in the downstairs loo at a house party,

the Robert Plant outfit at uni
consisting of a charity shop blouse
and my friend Sarah’s skinny jeans.

It remembers my friends remembering me
falling over on Bournemouth dance floors,
eating chips with sugar instead of salt,
that time my tongue got my face punched.

Today I high-fived the air
when my mother-in-law texted me
to say the council have finally confirmed

the local cardboard recycling will
return to a fortnightly collection.

Carl Burkitt 2026

You don’t watch Eurovision?!
Ed says walking out of our London office
in the early 2010s. I shake my head
and bite into what I don’t know
is the last pork pie of my life.
Don’t you just like knowing you are a part
of something everyone in the country is doing?

I think about Ed as I watch the chefs
down tools in the London pub I’m drinking in
to look at the rare sky of 2026.
Neighbours to the left of the beer garden
welcome strangers with colanders
to stand on their brick front garden walls.

A family of three laugh with a bus driver
about how they thought their seive would work.
My son has a homemade eclipse viewing box
from my best friend against his face –
a face that knows the world to be
more fun as a shared experience.

Carl Burkitt 2026

A new notepad is
a pair of fresh socks. 
It is unfolded wrapping paper, 
a nappy waiting to be used. 

A new notepad is 
climbing into clean bedsheets 
straight after a shower. 

A new notepad is not 
a 20-year-old Labrador. 
It is a litter of puppies 
barking hello to the world. 

A new notepad is 
a made up language, 
an alien set to explore, 
a plate desperate to see 
what the chef will dish up.

Carl Burkitt 2026

The Penrith sky is getting ready
to introduce the sun to Ullswater Lake.
The hills have shaken off last night’s rain
like a sodden Labrador ready to go again.

Our tent is yawning, the poles are stretching
with a youthful flexibility, the sleeping bags
are asking our walking boots to take over.

The bin bag I left outside crinkles. I imagine
Kettle Chips and Cadburys wrappers
talking about how lucky they were
to have an evening under the stars.

The bin bag jumps against our tent wall.
I imagine foxes shouting at us to leave,
a lost brown bear cracking its knuckles,
licking its lips at the smell of my sleeping son.

The zip opens the tent’s porch and my neck
peers towards the bin to protect my family.
A crow eating a marshmallow looks at me.
S’mores again later? it says. Definitely, I nod.

Carl Burkitt 2026