Morning Geoff, keeping warm? the security guard said. Inside and out, Geoff replied, with the charm of the silver hair tufts poking out the side of the conker brown flap cap sitting on his head. Geoff’s ‘volunteer’ lanyard hung around his neck like a gold medal. His eyes were a log cabin’s fireplace. He had the shoulders of a man carrying the world but a skip in his toes making it look like a feather.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I sometimes feel like I’m a teabag
in a cup of hot water.
If you let me sit for a while
you’ll see the best me.
Leave me too long, I go a bit cold.
I can’t quite fit inside a microwave,
but two warm hands often do the trick.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Walls have so much power.
Without them we’d realise the ridiculousness
of the fact, once a day, on average, most people
have a shit mere inches away
from a colleague / stranger / boss / potential friend.
When I’m in a hotel I smile at how many people
are definitely having sex above, below and next to me.
And then I don’t sleep thinking about the likelihood
of being adjacent to a murder.
If walls could talk, I don’t think they would,
like a toddler who’s seen so much
they don’t know where to start.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I have blobs on my skin that have no pigment,
mainly on my hands and a few dots
up my arms and legs.
My limbs are like a painter’s palette,
if the painter only painted
rented accommodation in magnolia,
or the occasional ivory when feeling fancy.
There’s one paper white patch
around my right eye slowly growing bigger.
I’m half a panda from Opposite Land.
A negative pirate.

© Carl Burkitt 2020