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

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