Normal, please,
was the answer.
What milk would you like?
was the question.
Do you think goats are jealous
of the monopoly of the cows?
Do oats and almonds feel insecure
that they’re not normal enough?
When I watch my son breast feed
is it normal to panic
about him growing up
and being turned into a leather wallet?
© Carl Burkitt 2020
I used to watch the guys at house parties
who would lick their fingertips
to poke them into candle flames
then drip wet wax
on the backs of their hands
and wonder what they were like at sex.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
You start the day
with the eyes that chose your first goldfish,
a smile as long as a slipper’s opening,
the feet of a puppy on laminate flooring.
Your clean shirt is excited
for a day of sweat and penguin shit –
there’s no time to hibernate
when gentrified jungle cats need brunch.
When asked if you’re scared
you think about the hand of an ex colleague.
Morning handsome, you lie to a giraffe
and skip lunch to count the chimps
like school kids who never understood you.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
I try to cross the road
and I can hear at least two sirens behind me,
a muffled argument in the distance and what
sounds like a window cracking around the corner.
The cartilage in my hip is grinding
like the table leg sized pepper
in the restaurant to my left
with too many different coloured lights.
I can see a puddle swallowing
the reflection of a miserable pigeon
and a bus driver is texting at a red light
while an estate agent is holding a phone
between his ear and shoulder at his desk,
flicking through paperwork with one hand
and tapping his laptop with one finger on the other.
Someone in a pub laughs and a cat licks its paw
and the wind is sideways and the moon blinks
and an old lady forgets me forever.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
Every night
before bin collection day I forget
whether it’s general waste and cardboard
or glass and plastic I need to put out,
so I look outside the living room window to see
what bins the next door neighbour’s lined up,
the one to the left
who trims her shrubs with a smile
and has hair as snow white and trustworthy
as David Attenborough’s.
In the short walk down the stairs
towards my front door I think I hear
her husband in his purple trilby laughing,
convinced today is the day he’s finally tricked me.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
It was a simple choice, really –
tear off my thigh skin
or gently sing the song
that boils the lightening
of your spine
into a soft plate
of spaghetti.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
My fridge situation is all out of whack.
I’ve got half a jar of olives
next to an Oreo Dairy Milk I don’t remember.
There’s out of date hollandaise
sitting on cans of ale I can’t pronounce.
I’ve got five eggs in one packet of 12
and two eggs in another packet of 12.
Someone’s hidden their jar of tahini
behind my reduced Milky Bar yogurts
and they’ve smuggled in microwave swede mash
alongside springs onions and fake ham.
I’m not proud of the pre-sliced Edam cheese
or unopened bottle of Pigs In Blanket Mayonnaise.
And don’t get me started
on the accidental smooth Branston Pickle.
I’ve got eyes made from onions,
my nerves are the ghosts of old spilt milk.
Every bit in the orange juice with bits
is a chunk of guilt directly from the bottle.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
There is a shelf on my bookshelf
that middle,
bows in the
like a grin to a new bedtime story.
Book spines are teeth desperate
to bite down and chew on any kind
of adventure that takes them away.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
I walked past
the most handsome man
I have ever seen
in my life today.
I didn’t see his face
but his strides
had a bounce
like he was plotting
to go to the moon.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
Carl tells tales 