If I were a shepherd
I’d ask people to call me Shep.
I’d give all the lambs nicknames too,
things like Bud, Dot Cotton and Woolf.
In December I would paint my crook
with red and white stripes
and wear a tea towel on my head, the one
that made me cry during the ‘92 Nativity.
I’d wander the planet and hunt down the sheep
you scared away in Wales to explain it was an accident.
It’s sad thinking that sheep’s likely dead now too.
So I don’t think that.
I think about it hopping across the damp grass
dodging your clumsy swear word bullets
and giggling as your face hits the mud,
grateful for the chance to grow and be free.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I was smiling in my sleep
then woken by a different smile
to tell me I was smiling in my sleep.
As I moved my concrete head,
trying to smile in my awake,
the room was a scream at the sight
of the pillowed side of my face
smothered in blood.
I’d had an unconscious nose bleed,
smiling as it slowly drowned me.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Silent ceilings.
Toes turning into grass.
Climbing a post film mountain with a piss-filled bladder.
A back door.
The near death experience of carrying a week’s
worth of washing down a staircase with no eyes.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

We need haircuts
We need haircuts
The man just kept shouting it
We need haircuts
We need haircuts
His eyes wanted something more
We need haircuts
We need haircuts
The breath of a stranger
We need haircuts
We need haircuts
The thrill of blade near neck
We need haircuts
We need haircuts
A compliment from a loved one
We need haircuts
We need haircuts

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Someone said something to me once.
The kind of something that made me
wish I could punch the nose off a planet.
My ears winced and agreed and screamed.
I tore off my skin like a comfortable onesie.
Six years later the leaves jumped off my family tree.
I thought about something someone said to me.
I wrote letters to Mercury, Venus and Mars
and watched the words ignite the Milky Way.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

The words on the box of beer read
BEERS OF EUROPE:
Not just Europe, not just beer.
My brain did a backflip
as my hands turned into feet.
I felt myself unplug from the Matrix,
Ed Harris told me he was God.
The bird in the tree outside my bedroom climbed through the window
and ordered me to scream in his face.
I was born and died and born and dead.
My books started telling lies,
our houseplants leaned towards the shade
and I slipped between the floorboards.
BEERS OF EUROPE:
Not just Europe, not just beer.

© Carl Burkitt 2020