Lap tray.
Weyhey!
Saviour of jeans.
Gravy blocker for the knees.
You are our baked bean wicket keeper,
our graveyard of stains.
A thousand tea time stories
splashed across your face,
you are a buffet of the past.
A dribbling artist’s finest work.
Morning, noon and night
you do great holding a plate
for my ring-finger room mate
and every one
of her glorious cutlery mistakes.
Lap tray.
Weyhey!
© Carl Burkitt 2020
You are stains on a lap tray.
You are chocolate in the corner of mouths.
You are restless legs and spider solitaire.
You are face prods.
You are Teen Mom OG.
You are Teen Mom UK.
You are Catfish.
You are Stevie Wonder.
You are cheesy chips with piping hot gravy
and half a tin of cold beans on the side.
You are disco.
You are frayed toothbrush bristles.
You are a made up song.
You are a set of a thousand open ears.
You are.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
You’ve been built a bit premature.
A future alarm clock
poised in the corner of the room.
A friend of a friend
says he hears phantom screams
when he stays in hotel rooms.
My hangover won’t stop crying.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
Awkward
awkward
hello hello
awkward.
One person in charge until other persons
arrive and the group gets in charge.
Three times five heads on a laptop.
Questions. Obvious.
Impossible.
Obvious.
Impossible obvious.
Seven point five brain relaxation.
Buffering banter.
LED LADS.
Fourteen barmen screaming
“YOU’RE ON MUTE.”
Sincerity punches away and
face-on-screen-face
says this is the place for each other
to be each other stripped backed loved up
get another drink we’ll keep on going.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
You’re a peculiar looking bugger.
I wouldn’t put a penny on you at the Grand National.
You couldn’t handle a jockey’s weight.
The good news is, when I’m forced
to put you down, I can pull you up again.
You’d be lost in a motorway-side field.
Drivers would certainly stop and stare.
I’m still not used to seeing
bras and pants draped over you
like a wiry blue Tom Jones.
I’m excited to see you try on socks
a hundred times too small for you.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
Let’s get beautifully confused.
Let’s swim through typos
and backwards phrases.
Let’s do the opposite of milk.
Let’s wear veggie nugget waistcoats,
swap heads, skim peach stones across the sky.
Let’s read the wrong bus time table,
put sugar on our ice rink chips,
comb each other’s skin with secrets,
dip penguins in pints of gravy.
Let’s hold the hands of clocks
and take selfies of the past.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
You’re two feet long and nailed down.
You’re a hello hostage forced to small talk
with every shoe, flip flop and wellie.
Nice weather for ducks
I hear you cry
after rainy forest walks.
You hold on to shit for weeks,
struggle to brush off daily swipes
from the arrogant door
flapping its oily gums.
You sit and listen,
sharpening your bristles.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
If I’m the one in charge
of locking the door when we leave the flat,
I always put the key in the lock
and shut the door and feel my heart
bounce against my arse hole
in fear I’ve left my keys behind
and locked us out for 7,000 years.
When I feel the magic piece of metal in my hand
it feels like it could open pathways to worlds
where I can sing like Beyoncé, climb walls
like Spider-Man with a jaw like Batman, eat Skips by the skipful without making
my hips full and speak fluent dog.
A key in my hand when I think it’s left behind
is a chance to start over.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
That morning the sun was out in a way
it made London look like it had just been born.
All stranger smiles and movie vibes.
My feet were gentle springs on pavement.
Walking towards the studio to make you
my palms were Patrick Swayze,
my ears were my best friend Whoopi Goldberg.
I was as light as a ghost, baby.
But when our hands touched I didn’t understand.
My thumbs were stab wounds,
my fingers broken car crash bones.
You were a sloppy corpse, drunk in the afternoon.
London died.
The bowl looked alright though.
I sometimes use it for olives.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
Every so often,
I’d say about once or twice a week,
the window in my living room
makes a little click noise
loud enough to get my attention.
It sounds like a miniature sone tapping against it.
But it isn’t that.
If feels more structural,
something moving that shouldn’t be moving.
I have literally no idea what it is.
Genuinely.
There’s no pattern to when it happens.
I’m clueless.
I like to think it’s the walls stretching
one inch too far after an afternoon nap,
its bones saying Pop!
But it isn’t that.
I have absolutely no clue.
I don’t think I have the energy to know.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
Carl tells tales 