You are pushing a plastic snail
bigger than your torso across the floor
with the end of a set of measuring spoons
and I’m thinking about the men
who spend their days chopping
congealed fat off the walls of our sewers
and my fingernails are spotless
and I cannot re-wire a plug.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

An angry bald man?
A molten coaster?
A wild eye?
A tiny freckle on a giant blue creature?
An evil bum hole?
The world’s most dangerous football?
The Devil’s egg yolk?
The reason you’re here in the morning?

© Carl Burkitt 2021

What did you do to deserve this, Keith?
Is your tongue a concrete mile?
Are your eyelids twitching curtains?
Is the stubble across your chin
symmetrically placed shrubs?
Are your knees speed bumps
and your forearm lampposts?
Maybe you opened up your home
to as many people as you could,
or maybe you were someone
who got walked all over.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

You’re gripping a spoon like a giant
strangling the throat of a villager.
Their hair is thick Weetabix
spread like a goatee across your chin.
I imagine you holding a pool cue,
forgetting if you are reds or yellows,
stacking pound coins on the wooden trim.
Do you remember the pub menu from yesterday?
The one you scrunched up and chewed
where the words Skin-on fries, £4.00 were
sat minding their own business.
You will have a heart in your palm
one day, whether you like it or not.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

I’m having a beer with her.
I’ve got a fragrant pale ale,
she’s nailing stout after stout.
She won’t stop talking about her grandchildren
In the wrong light I confuse her
for Gordon Ramsey but she only swears
when I mention Pat Butcher.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

Great question, sir. Follow me.
Here you go: where Shakespeare ends
poetry begins. That goes for our shelves
and for my views on Shakespeare.
Good day to you. And off he bounces,
his knees clicking like the top of a critics’s pen.
The tassels on his fluorescent yellow and green
face mask dance like they want me to follow.
He fires a finger gun at a colleague
organising the self help section
who raises a thumb that has seen better days.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

There are two red onions
next to a grapefruit
in a fruit bowl
in the living room.
I am the banana
in the background,
unsure how to rest.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

You are strapped in,
facing the wrong way.
You can’t speak the language.
You don’t know where you’re going.
We’ve done all we can for you.
The hardest part must be knowing
one day you will be able
to get out and do what you like,
but not tonight.
Tonight, you must submit
to the white noise of cars
overtaking us,
breaking the speed limit.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

As kids we would sit and guess
who was coming down the stairs
by the creaks of the floorboards.
It became second nature.
We’d know if we needed to hide
what we were doing
or if we could get away with it.
When I walk into my son’s room
in the morning his face is the partner
of the inventor of the door,
blown away by the reveal.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

He is the bloke who uses different tongs
to flip the vegetarian burgers from the meat,
the woman who lets strangers
have some of the eggs from her chickens,
the charity shop that lets you stay
a few minutes after closing
so you can triple check the size of those trainers,
the lampposts in the dark corners,
the
the passerby offering directions,
the leaves that fall
and keep coming back.

© Carl Burkitt 2021