They’re on a date sipping breakfast tea
in between questions they feel they need to ask,
How was your day? Where are you from?
The carpet sits beneath them: blue, clean, predictable.
The clear window next to their table shows
a black car, a black car, a black car driving past.
The sky is where it should be
and then the ceiling collapses, the walls melt
into a murder of crows, the afternoon
opens into a fire as she asks him
What scares you more than anything?
© Carl Burkitt 2022
The karate kids
are running towards each other;
one past the pizza place,
one past the estate agents.
They are white-pyjamaed weapons
smiling HIYA with a wave
then HIYA with a chop to the air.
Their belts are orange
like the weak squash in the bottles
held by their parents trying to keep up,
like the sun smacking their cheeks.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
The safety net disappears
from time to time, you are alive,
arms drop because joints soften,
a loose feeling of I can do this,
flying is easy when you have wings.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
They’d be nice. They’d be nice. They’d be nice.
Everyone is fine. My black trousers
and polished shoes haven’t been needed
for while. I don’t know why
I’m walking down aisle 25
thinking what crisps would be good at a wake.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
I guess so,
a bit wet and predictable,
made of idle chit chat
and the crumbs of thin biscuits,
gently simmering under a lid,
sat next to a cheese sandwich at a wake,
a disposable bag filled with a billion pieces,
better in the hands of others.
She was asking the man in front of me,
but he was too busy swearing down the phone
waiting for his double espresso.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
and the grey lorries out of the window
crawled towards us with elephant legs,
past the gap-toothed drains and thumbs up lampposts.
A tree took the time to dance for us,
the trains stuck their tongues out like snakes,
the puddles winked like happy tears.
We saw a pigeon today, it served us breakfast
tea at the coffee shop and told us it liked our hair.
The sun was a yo-yo and the moon a full stop.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
and the colour ink you might have chosen.
I think about whether you would’ve dotted your i’s
or left them wondering who they are.
The neat, pre-packed boxes of your things scream
you would’ve folded the paper cleanly
down the middle, using a board marker thick
finger to keep it shut flush, no gaps to see through.
It’s impossible to walk past a dropped sticky note
or slice of notepad in the street covered
in desperate reminders for a living memory.
I collect lost shopping lists in supermarkets
and cobble together a basket of your final meal.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
Debris gathers in my back pocket
like guests at a surprise party.
Crumbs of cheese ask miniature pebbles
ask belly button fluff ask bits of leaf
ask cornflakes found under the sofa
ask torn tissue ask dead grass
ask hairs from tired heads
what they do, where they’re from,
what they’re up to this weekend,
who they know around here.
They talk about a hand the size of a plum,
the way it scooped them up and held them
in front of eyes bigger than a fruit bowl.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
and tell us something about the price of milk,
remind us what aisle the mangos live,
explain what time this supermarket closes
and whether we have any wholemeal bread
out the back and if there’s a secret
to how you walk like the world has no oxygen,
as if conversations are something we’re fortunate
to have and how it’s possible for you to look
at a stranger with the gentleness of a fresh leaf.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
They’re standing in her thinking space;
one across the way chasing leaves,
one down for no reason at all.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
Carl tells tales 