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

Let’s have a think about red. Red. The paintwork of Lightning McQueen. The inside and outside of a cherry tomato. Ketchup: a blob of it on a wooden teddy bear plate. What else is red? The torso of a nephew draped in a Manchester United football kit. Father Christmas’s floppy hat. Pizza sauce spread across raw dough with a ladle in the hand of a grandad next to his pizza oven. What is red? It’s a nose on a frosty morning, blood on a tongue from biting your own lip because you were too hungry biting your cheese sandwich. Red is a fire engine waking a toddler from a nap. It is a surprise set of socks in a work meeting. It is the hungry caterpillar’s head, a slice of watermelon, a slice of salami. Red is a rose written by someone struggling to think about what is red. It’s a post box buckling under the weight of bad news. It is a spot my wife isn’t afraid to pop.

Carl Burkitt 2023

The vicar is eating
a pack of Pom Bears
and it’s an image
I think worth sharing
with four line breaks.

Carl Burkitt 2023

Here you go,
we say,
take this thing we’ve cobbled together.
Please fill in the gaps with things
we’ve forgotten how to do.
Keep it warm. Feed it.
Give it back
better than I’ll ever be.

Carl Burkitt 2023

I can hear the butter in the fridge
whispering for the toast to come and find it. 
Five dry towels are dreaming of getting wet.
The sandals in the wardrobe think it’s summer.
Doorframe dust is wondering
what to say to new skin.
3pm to 4pm is a calendar month.

Carl Burkitt 2023

It’s a confusing feeling
wanting to be eaten. But I felt it
all day. I’d watch canineless people
bob into the shop and wonder
what security they must have to not
need a pup in their life. I’d watch them
sip their espresso and not pester
with anything by their feet. Then
there were the dog owners who’d drag
their hound behind them, march past
the Dirt in the tin (me) to slump
in the corner and shove a creamy coffee
with black forest gateaux syrup slinking
through it into their gob. Then in walked
my dream: a 40-something hiker
with a Labrador by their side. They’d order
a tea to slurp by the window and watch
the trees, smile at the strangers,
worry about the future after sliding off
my lid for their best friend to go wild
with my insides.

Carl Burkitt 2023

Father Christmas is a good mate of mine.
We’ve known each other for so long
we cannot agree on who grew a beard first.
I do remember his
being a dark brown though. He was into Lumberjack
culture and, before his fascination with red velvet
dressing gowns, would strut around our flat
in thick checked shirts and undersized beanies.
We didn’t have a garden so he would chop broccoli
at the stem in the kitchen and yell TIMBEEER.
We laughed a lot together back then. We lived
off a diet of carrots with mince, and pints of milk.
We rarely talked about the future or ambitions,
our relationship was grounded in the present.

Carl Burkitt 2023

His new notebook’s front cover
was patterned like the body of a zebra.
He was excited to fill it with poems
about galloping freely in sun-drenched
deserts, enjoying the feeling of using
all of his muscles to their full potential,
resting in the safety of a pack of zebras
that understood his life. But who was he
kidding? Every page would be attacked,
killed, eaten, by a lion he could never
hide from.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

If I thought about the number of films
I will never watch or crisps I will never eat
or books I will never read or people
I will never please or feelings I will never
live, I’d never get around to buying that bike
to cycle the thousands of roads I’ve never cycled.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Some geezer with a thick beard and grubby
beanie started playing peekaboo with me
in Cheadle Hulme Costa. He put a hand
over his eyes then removed it but, the more
I smiled with no teeth, he upped his game.
He angled his head behind a Christmas hot
Chocolate promotional stand then returned
into view with shocked eyes and a round mouth,
then started jumping out from behind
a cream-coloured pillar waving his fingers.
He then began squatting down to the ground
and leaping out from a set of table and chairs.
He spilt his tea doing that one and I spat
Jammie Dodger crumbs out of my gob.
Mum grinned at me, her back to the geezer,
and told Aunt Kathy how she always makes me
laugh without moving a muscle.

© Carl Burkitt 2023