Flames from the past
crackle on the screen
to make you feel at home.
There is no way it warms you up,
but it does. The orange waves
tap into the part of you
that still wants to live in a cave
and talk about wild berries
and meat on the bone.
The logs died God knows when
but I get to watch it over and over
and imagine you holding
a marshmallow over them, cracking
that smile I tell everyone about
when I’ve had a couple of beers.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

The words land like piss
on a blue urinal cake.
The man’s smile
is bathroom tile violence.
The need to fight melts away
when your bones have reached
full capacity and my skin slips into
corridor silence. He has nowhere
to put the urge to damage
so uses a finger on the hand
that isn’t directing his stream
to point at a blue bobble
that was a gift in June.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

The phone box was full.
There must have been anywhere
between 600 and 80,000 bodies
crammed together in there.
Limbs wrapped around each other like
a landline cable around a nervous finger.
Everyone had someone to call
but nothing to say.
That didn’t stop them fighting
for the chance to stand
in a comfortable silence.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

His name badge font is harsher.
His slender, colourful suits have lost their pattern.
His moustache remains in the shape of a smile
though and he is filled with flavour and
disappointment.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

The sun is not ready yet.
They hold coffees
bigger than their hands
with names I’ll never know.
Their unbranded gillets
look tiny from up here.
The group of four are laughing
at an in-joke I imagine.
I bet the heels
of their brown or black loafers
sound like nattering
on the iced tarmac.
I turn the kitchen tap on
like a water cooler.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

They’re cleaning their car together.
He is too hard to wear a hat
outside in early December.
She is yellow comfort in hers,
gentle strokes of a soft sponge.
I think he hates his car,
trying to scratch it with water.
The driveway is suds
and unspoken conversation.
They both wave and smile
to a man without gloves walking home
to only a handful of faces he knows.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

Someone shared an image
their daughter had painted online.
It was a dish of chopped lemons
and a silver grater. The background
was herb green and the shadows
and light landed in the right places.
I cried. It’s difficult to imagine
you creating fruit when
there’s so much to work out here.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

There’s a jigsaw puzzle
on the breakfast bar:
endless pieces
of a broken Victorian
Christmas. Specks of snow
in odd-shaped blue
mixed in with half
the words of a sign
selling warm chestnuts.
Miniature fingers
want to reach and create
a mess of the mess
but we wait
to see what it will become.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

When I grow up
I want to be Paul and Barry Chuckle.
I want to wear red braces.
I want a catchphrase repeated.
I want to feel comfortable
with a moustache when eating soup.
I want the energy for panto.
I want a catchphrase repeated.
I want to smile
so wide people think
my cheeks will explode.
I want a catchphrase repeated.

© Carl Burkitt 2021