I’m stood between two men. The shoulders of
the guy to my left are almost wider than a door,
the man on my right has a chair-sized head.
The conversational jigsaw pieces they’re throwing
around the lift build the picture that they’re
colleagues on their way to a 4th floor meeting.
I forgot my laptop! Shoulders says.
Christ, me too! Head says. Dan’s gonna kill us.
The nervous silence is unbearable.
Just knock him out, I try, chuckling.
No way, Head says. You should see the size of him.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I just drank a cup of water
that tasted like onions.
Half a pint of dinner-prep tears.
If onions could cry, would you cut them?
I once cried peeling potatoes.
It was a Monday,
the living room was full,
I just wanted to be useful.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I got egg on me was a sentence I said today
to a man in the top tax bracket.
I wonder how many eggs he’s bought in his life.
I bet his past is an eggshell massacre,
his wheelie bin a Red Lion graveyard,
his kitchen a haunted house of yolk ghosts.
I bet the man has had more eggs than oxygen,
he just doesn’t wear them on his clothes.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I spent the day with a serious man.
He was all elbows and straight lines.
Ironed shirt. Pressed suit. Creaseless skin.
Late afternoon he finally sat down, his trousers
riding up to reveal devil red socks. They looked like
Christmas stockings stuffed with disappointment,
strawberry laces wrapped around a bread stick,
a clown dressed as the Grim Reaper.
They were a chocolate chip in a digestive biscuit,
a bar brawl in a nunnery, a firework at a funeral.

© Carl Burkitt 2020