The two nine year old lads
are arguing outside the school gates
about which one is Batman
and which one is Robin.
‘You’re Batman and I’m Robin.’
‘No! I’m Robin! You’re Batman!’
‘No! I’m Robin! You’re Batman!’
On and on it goes – a nose to nose battle
for the chance to be unseen in red and green,
the pride of having the other one’s back.

Carl Burkitt 2024

You’re better than flat pack.
Don’t pretend you know me,
think poster on the billboard.
You’re better than flat pack.
What if flat pack furniture
is the only furniture I can get up to my flat,
thin poster on the billboard.
You’re better than flat pack.
What if I like my flat pack furniture,
thin poster on the billboard.
You’re better than flat pack.
If that’s true,
thin poster on the billboard,
why do I see myself in its frustration,
cheap quality, left over bag of unneeded screws?
You’re better than flat pack.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Sat still.
Facing forward.
Feet flat.
Arms crossed.
Unblemished trench coat.
No headphones.
No tea. No coffee
No looking left.
No looking right.
From 7.13am to 9.20am.
Doesn’t show train ticket when asked.
Smiles when ticket inspector nervously leaves.
Doesn’t remove food from his teeth.

Carl Burkitt 2024

He’s sitting in the cinema seat I paid for
with his feet resting on the one in front of him,
so I sit silently further down the row
and try writing a poem about courage,
but it’s dark in here and I don’t want to
get my phone out for my notes app
so I do what I can to remember, when I get home,
to write something
about how anger is popcorn kernels exploding
one at a time in a shut microwave
with nothing to do but smack into each other
and how the man in my seat dropped his drink.

Carl Burkitt 2024

The football lads are talking about football
and how the way they think about football
makes them good at playing football
and watching football and ignoring
what each other is trying to say.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Jack Johnson is on the radio singing how
he thinks I’m such a pretty thing
and that he wants to take me and make me all his.
He’s saying he would steal me
from this patient world, let it chase us,
and how he could never take me back.
He says we’ll watch it from the clouds
and likes how sweet I am to him,
even when I beat him at double solitaire.
He thinks the more I love, the more my heart will
ache, but it doesn’t matter because love is
the only thing that carries on. Jack Johnson is
on the radio singing how I am such a pretty thing,
which is kind, but I’m busy this week
remembering to never get too high or too low
and that car crashes or sunrises are not my fault.

Carl Burkitt 2024

He’s not reading
the car advert poster
above the service station urinal
because he has his back to it
and is pissing out
on to the middle of the floor.

Carl Burkitt 2024

alone,
dance music no longer crawling
out of the pub, the sun rising with
disappointment in him, Londoners
going to work with top buttons,
city farm animals waiting for food,
his dangling feet desperate for an owner
with a tongue that says what it means.
He would be searching for a patch of grass
to rest his spine until a lack of courage
knocked him out – a chance to dream
about walking down the river, a nervous
bowl of chips, ring fingers brushing briefly
while passing over a bottle of wine.

Carl Burkitt 2024

He bought a cardboard tub of nachos
and crunched his way through a film
about wrestling and dying men.
Cheese dropkicked his teeth, guacamole
frog-splashed his tongue, salsa held
his moustache in a side-headlock.
It was fun, the next day,
thinking of light-hearted ways his food
could have hurt him – more fun than sitting
in the atmosphere created by the death stare
at his echoing jaw from the woman behind him.

Carl Burkitt 2024

I spent a day as King Kong,
tore up a couple of cityscapes,
shoved my toe through a skyscraper window,
hit my chest loud enough to frighten birds,
snapped my jaw back, yelled through clouds,
held an officer worker in my palm –
I could feel his shivering heart speeding up,
his spine melting like butter at the thought
nobody would come to save him.

Carl Burkitt 2024