I was once asked
how do you know you have a forehead?
It made sense at the time.
Context is a powerful thing.
A grown man once asked me
can moons get married?
It wasn’t a grown man, it was a toddler,
but if all things go well he will one day
be a grown man who once asked me
can moons get married?
I often daydream about him saying that
when a job interviewer says
do you have any questions for us?

© Carl Burkitt 2020

How do curly hairs know how to be curly?
Do they have roots like Turkey Twizzlers?
Is the bit between my skull and head skin
a farm of pigs in a row sticking their bums to the sky?
My eyebrows don’t curl.
My armpit hairs are as straight
as a punk rocker’s Mohawk
when I reach to the curly nest on my head.
Sometimes I sit and wonder
what kind of bird would live in my hair.
I wonder if they’d want to fly away
before they’d even learned to walk.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

The skin of a pear is hell to me.
It’s nails down a chalkboard,
a sandpaper condom.
It’s eating a nail file
with a tongue made of fingertips.
It’s small talk in a lift.
It’s pacificlly.
It’s an unscheduled family phone call at work.
It’s spring 2004 and all I want to do
is stay in Swindon and get a taxi
home with you.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

You are unlikeable,
you put me off my food.
You put the hurt in yoghurt.
You put the rot in carrot,
the cum in cucumber,
the fuck in focaccia.
A picnic with you
wouldn’t be worth the cramp.
If you invited me to lunch
I’d pretend a love one had died.
Probably not,
but just know I wouldn’t enjoy it.

© Carl Burkitt 2020