He got some professional hope
is the best typo I’ve ever seen.
I imagine it to be a baker
confidently baking only 12 rolls.
I once heard someone say they were
an optimist but rarely told anyone
out loud in case it jinxed it.
I get hope from small things like
spotting takeaway drivers on Monday nights,
toddlers standing after every tumble,
out of tune adult choirs,
or remembering the supply teacher
who always wrote the date on the board
10 years in the past and how no one
corrected her to save her embarrassment.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

My skin gets up to all sorts when I’m not looking.
It holds my bits in, stops my bones drowning.
I wake up with scratches from nightmares.
You trim the wispy hairs off the back of my neck.
My wispies. You pop my insecurities
like the black heads on my chest.
When my beard hairs don’t want to face the world
and grow back to the other side of my skin
only your fingers (and tweezers)
know what to do.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

A conversation can change the world.
A listening ear opens the universe.
Do you like tea, sir? My barber asked.
Do you like biscuits, sir? Buy biscuit tea.
No need to ever chew a biscuit again.
Does your wife like peaches, raspberries,
things like that? Milkshake Shampoo, sir,
it has all the smells. I once had a client,
sir, who told me he fucked his niece
from his wife’s side. He expected me to say
‘Get in there son!’ I told him to leave
and sort his family out. I’d only shaved
half his head.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I have a crack in the end of my shoe.
It’s not quite talking yet, but when it does
I wonder what it will have to say.
It’s seen quite a lot. Today alone
it walked past a dog kissing a dog’s bum,
two cars honking like posturing birds,
the crumbs of a biscuit spread out
wider than a biscuit, a puddle
when there was no rain in the sky and a
young man talking to himself in a way that
if it was Wednesday he’d be prepping for an interview,
but it was Friday so perhaps it was a date.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

A headache occurs in the nerves,
muscles and blood vessels
surrounding the head.
It is not something happening to the brain.
The brain itself cannot feel pain.
I try to remember that
when I can’t get out of bed.
In those moments when open fields
feel like overcrowded workplace lifts
I tell myself My brain cannot feel pain.

© Carl Burkitt 2020