I’m watching you
watching a piano leave the house.
The keys are the teeth you will grow
and the black bags under my eyes.
You are watching intently.
What do you think is happening?
Who do you think the men are –
the two with matching masks over their noses
pouring water down their muscular chins.
They have wheels and ramps for ease
and dust sheets to protect the wooden frame
inside their massive removal van.
Your friends after ballet class or chess
or karate or pottery or boxing will ask
Why can’t your dad drive?
You will shrug on the walk home
when I ask about your hobbies.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

You yawn like you mean it:
your eyebrows two fed up caterpillars,
your nose a scrunched up fist,
your mouth a doorway to your feelings.
I once worked in an office with no windows
and yawned until the back of my chair snapped,
throwing me to the floor. The stiff carpet
was the one in my primary school classroom
where we were told
You can be whatever you want to be.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

We will go to the beach.
We will have buckets and spades
and a lightweight cricket set.
We will have factor 50 and pointless windbreakers.
I will tell you I hate the feel of sand
and you will put some in my socks.
I will be jealous of your waistline
and SpongeBob SquarePants swimming shorts.
The ice cream seller will get the sauces wrong
on our 99s but we daren’t say anything.
I will promise to get better at skimming stones.
The tide will be described by other writers
and the emerging curl in the centre of your head
will be controlled by the moon
as you whistle at the crabs in rock pools.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

Today my friends are well done hash browns.
They are a squirrel relaxing in the sun,
a full plughole, a crispy bagel. My friends are
a coffee, a coffee and future coffee.
They are a meticulously prepped, lavish sandwich.
They are an empty picture frame, a ripe banana,
a new pair of football boots, a sharpened pencil.
My friends are music at full volume. They are
peanut butter, an avocado, funny school stories.
Today my friends are a broken egg.
They are odd socks. They are Zoom. They are kids.
Today my friends are a mattress.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

It was a blink.
It was a right hook.
It was a whisper.
It was a tactical move from a player-manager.
It was chaos.
It was a bending of time and space.
It was nothing.
It was everything.
It was a spoonful of porridge
you held and put into my mouth.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

I wonder if
the knobhead at Netflix
who invented the automatic play feature
when you hover over
a show or film in the menu
will ever see their life
flash before their eyes.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

I don’t do magic tricks.
My wife’s hay fever is too strong
to pull flowers out of my sleeves,
my big ears would swallow money,
I daren’t damage my hats with rabbits,
I’m too scared
to make some things disappear
and I don’t suit a tailcoat.
But I have stopped sawing myself in half:
it wasn’t doing me any good.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

My phone charger hates me.
There’s no other explanation.
There’s no way it doesn’t like its job,
it was born to do it.
It can’t feel the cold
or be allergic to dust
or dislike the sound of traffic
or dislike being trodden on
or dislike being called names
or be desperate for something
more out of life
because it is inanimate.
My phone charger hates me.
There’s no other explanation.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

I’m scraping black beans off a pot
thinking about you
playing with a spatula in the bath.
When anyone drinks a glass of water
your mouth opens in awe
and your legs bounce like springs.
Today you spent 10 minutes
giggling at a microwave.
You find the world hilarious,
like the time I was sat at the dinner table
silently staring at a Zoom meeting
telling me I was being made redundant.
You were lying on the floor,
chewing a Now TV remote,
laughing at the ceiling.
I am your apprentice.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

Written using sentences found by searching for ‘dust’ in my WhatsApp search bar.

My house is an ice palace
of dust and passive aggression.
I left my window open
to air all the dust generated.
Now the dust has settled,
sweep all of it up with a dustpan and brush,
dust off my disco ball,
coax a song from your dusty throat;
When I’m rudely awoken by the dustmen.
I love the amount of tasty dust on your fingers,
you simply have dust for hands.

© Carl Burkitt 2021