Mozzarella is oozing from the bottom of the freshly cooked pesto panini and is about to hit the woman’s wrist any second now but she’s too busy flirting with her husband to notice and I would be a weirdo for walking across Handforth Dean Costa to warn her – let alone dramatically pointing in her direction – so I let her ever-so-slightly burn herself and watch her tell off her husband for not letting her know mozzarella was oozing from the bottom of the freshly cooked pesto panini and I silently wish for their son to have the confidence to speak up and do the right thing when he grows up.

Carl Burkitt 2025

I think I’ve run out of ideas
so I pick up a pen
and point it at the moon
that shrugs like an elephant
at all the shite it’s been described as
over the centuries.

Carl Burkitt 2025

You can see it in the pretty clothes he picks
for his daughter, the £450
vet bill for his original fur baby.
His head is a crystal door handle
decorating walls like a disco ball
when the light of a stranger’s interests hits him.
He splices open bags of crisps in pubs –
smoked meat options for the meat eaters,
cheese and onion just in case there are
secret vegetarians among us –
and his mind dances to familiar fingers
nipping in and out like Hungry Hippos.
He knows his way around an expense receipt,
pours out compliments like free gravy.
A bag of peanuts is a reminder that
conversations are poems about death
and 1990’s Arsenal footballers
and obsessions that can become dangerous
if not shared over a stained oak table.
His chest is a megaphone that screams,
‘Just rhyme the last two lines as the reader leaves.’

Carl Burkitt 2025

1. Completing tasks is impossible.

Carl Burkitt 2025

It’s the 10th anniversary of her husband’s death
so her boyfriend is buying her cheesy chips
in the kebab house. She loves him.
And today was a tough morning for her
21-year-old daughter in the nice cafe
holding space over poached eggs.
The boyfriend asks for extra burger sauce
and listens to his girlfriend explain to the staff
how the day was just as hard for him.
He holds her hand and orders onion rings.
“Isn’t he great?” she cries.

Carl Burkitt 2025

After Erin Bolens

The man next to me is asleep.
His head is so tightly against the window
the clouds are ginger curtains.

Carl Burkitt 2025

Batman is riding a BMX. 
The back wheel has no pegs 
which explains why Robin isn’t there.
He’s opted for an orange t-shirt today
and a bag of Haribo Strawbs in his back pocket.
The sun is out but he’s trying not to smile
because the bad guys by the cricket nets
need to know he means business.

Carl Burkitt 2025

Dad is holding my hand
tighter than I’m holding my ice cream.
He cries at the strangest things:
walking to school like we’ve done a hundred times,
me singing a Stormzy song,
watching me brush my own teeth,
the way I use basic manners with strangers,
the smell of pancakes on my birthday morning.
I counted the white hairs in his beard
this morning, but I got bored at 35.
They look like the snowflakes on the day
he taught me how to use a sledge.

Carl Burkitt 2025

We’re explaining to you that Free Willy isn’t real, how the whale wasn’t really captured by evil people who forced it to perform (despite the fact that the whale…actor…was technically captured by the filmmakers and forced to perform in a film about a whale being captured and being forced to perform). You say you understand. But explaining that the 12-year-old boy Jesse is a 45-year-old man called Jason James Richter, is a little bit trickier.

Carl Burkitt 2025

You’re on the third floor
practicing your seagull noises.
The beach is below us outside
but you like being at their level,
spying on people’s chips,
smelling the tops of trees,
telling me what the horizon is,
watching the waves try,
wondering how deep the fish are,
desperate to know where the sun goes.
I float
knowing you think you have wings.

Carl Burkitt 2025