Game 1: Spend 2 minutes coming up with fake pub names (or cafes). List as many as you can.
Game 2: Pick the one you like the most.
Game 3: For 8 minutes, imagine you’re sitting in that pub or cafe. Write a poem with, as poet Tim Clare would say, “crunchy specificity”. Describe the place with great detail. What’s happening there? Who’s having a drink? Is anyone eating? Etc.
Carl Burkitt
I love how old you are.
I love how smooth you are.
I love how you keep going.
I love how secure you make me feel.
I love how you just decided
furniture is allowed to be fun.
I love how you keep going.
I love how you remind me of the sea.
I love thinking about being with you
on the porch drinking homemade lemonade
growing old and creaking together.
I love how you keep going.
I hate how often I imagine you rocking
in the dark with no one sitting on you.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Game 1: Take a minute to find an inanimate object in your house.
Game 2: Spend 2 minutes looking at it and listing things you both like and hate about it.
Game 3: Write a love letter (or hate mail) to that object for 7 minutes.
I’m a volunteer chippendale
doing it for the adrenaline,
doing it in the windows
between metre readings
and learning about tax.
I’m a volunteer chippendale.
It started out to Status Quo
then James Bond themes
and now nursery rhymes.
I like watching my skin
that at one stage didn’t know how
to use a tin opener or put socks on
make shapes that don’t have names,
doing it in the windows
of self esteem.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Game 1: Take a minute to think of the dream job you wanted as a kid.
Game 2: Imagine you have that job. Take 4 minutes to write a list of anything involved with that job. Consider: Clothes, things you’d say, people you’d meet, what would you have for lunch, do you enjoy the job, etc etc.
Game 3: Pop the job title at the top of a page and spend 5 minutes on a poem about a day in your new life. Aim for 10 lines (of length).
Your
posture
is a
thumbs up
to
everything
you’ve
learned
in 8 months.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
When I heard the piano tuner was coming
I was expecting a little metal can
with tiny black and white keys and wooden legs.
Not really, but it helps the days go by.
A 10-year old once asked me
how I got to their house from London
and I said By giraffe
and her best mate whispered He’s lying
and the walls melted and reformed
into the shape of the wagging finger
of a worn out teacher saying
That’s what you get
for thinking you’re better than you are.
Not really, but it’s how my days go by.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
I am scared
about the rate your forehead is growing.
Why are your ears the way that they are?
It’s not actually that impressive what you just did.
I am scared of your eyes in the baby monitor.
When will look after yourself?
You are not perfect company.
This is difficult.
Today would be easier without you.
This is difficult.
I am a normal, well-rounded person
for having these thoughts because
they can co-exist with the thought that
you are every beat of my heart.
Shut up.
Just shut up.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
I cleaned my skin today
with something called Prince Charming.
I tried to think of clever lines
like it washed the frog away from last night
or it had the scent of a glass slipper fetish
or it gave my skin a feeling of undeserved power,
but all I could think about was the Adam Ant song
in the Pimms advert with Alexander Armstrong
and the weeks after you died
and how we requested it from nightclub DJs
so we could cause a scene and get kicked out
just for anything else to talk about.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Carl tells tales 