The football team had so many injuries
they had to fill their bench for today’s match
with a load of Santa’s elves.
Their faces were nerves wrapped in skin,
but they looked cute
sitting there with their innocent green hats
and training tops sponsored by Bet365.
Carl Burkitt 2023
What do you think? I say.
Carl Burkitt 2023
The penguin’s lost its body and the grown ups
in this flat can’t remember whose childhood
it came from. Its head hangs on a Christmas
tree branch, its felt beak stroked
every single morning
by the child in this flat who will grow up
not remembering how gentle he could be.
Carl Burkitt 2023
A woman is sitting inside
a gingerbread latte in a café
draped in tinsel. Her earrings are
elves and her nose is Rudolph’s.
Her friends are talking
about their pensions and how
Jeff can barely bend down these days
She’s splashing her feet
in her drink’s festive foam
and washing her hair with a mince pie.
Carl Burkitt 2023
The words look at me
through the window of a life
insurance company’s window,
painted on a white wall,
and remind me to write
my Christmas list.
Carl Burkitt 2023
It sits on cheeks
to tell us they are cold
when a mouth refuses
to be vulnerable. It grows
when looked at, waves
like the flag from a land
called Embarrassment. It screams
like an alarm asking us to leave.
Carl Burkitt 2023
Our son makes a pile of purple tinsel
on our living room floor and calls it a tinsel puddle.
Don’t stand in the tinsel puddle Daddy,
you’re not wearing your tinsel boots.
He jumps over the tinsel puddle and back again
enough times for a clock to move five minutes.
He walks to a bag of baubles
and leaves the tinsel puddle glistening
like a set of freshly cleaned teeth
or an eye that hasn’t seen too much.
Carl Burkitt 2023
I’m mowing the lawn of a home
that doesn’t exist yet. I understand
the undulations in the grass, how best
to trim where soil meets patio,
and I’m doing it all without headphones
distracting me from the sparrows.
My T-Shirt fits my shoulders perfectly.
All of my brothers are living
the lives they want to be living.
There are three children in the house
busy growing into people who will tell stories
about how I once delivered carpets
and refused to let them know
they are strong enough to tackle me to the
ground.
Carl Burkitt 2023
I swallowed a pill the size of a thumbnail
and transformed into a child
in my son’s pre-school class.
He didn’t recognise me and just continued
his plan of crying for 20 minutes
while delicately hanging up his blue fleece
and on the peg with a picture of his face,
placing his green water bottle on his shelf,
tackling his two times table. I enjoyed
seeing his classroom. Red, green, blue fingerprints
of friends collected his tears and tact them
to the wall, Julia Donaldson books were
scattered on the floor like ideas waiting
to be gathered, a heart was trodden into
the carpet. I didn’t know whether to tell
my son that I was there, reach for his hand,
explain how I never want him to feel alone.
He looked through my eyes with the darkness
of a stranger, the death of a memory. He
picked up a toy police car and showed it
to his teacher.
Carl Burkitt 2023
I’m on a weekend cooking show biting into a creamy pasta dish made by a celebrity chef. The ageing popstar to my left and the edgy comedian to my right are nodding with soft heads as they nibble the smallest portion off a morning fork. The actor with the hair forgot to tell the producers he’s a vegan so he’s pretending to eat; he’s making all the right noises. Mmmhmmm. Wow! Delish. My gob is stuffed. Spaghetti is hanging down my chin – cheese sauce is punching my moustache hairs. I want to scream from the rooftops that this meal is the best meal I have ever eaten. The rockstar in leather at the other end of the table says he can’t eat lunch in the morning and compliments the pink gin and tonic a mixologist from Shoreditch made two hours ago.
Carl Burkitt 2023
Carl tells tales 