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

On this day
a man sitting by the lamp in café
told me my flies were undone
and my pants were poking out
and Albert Einstein presented
his quantum theory of light
in 1908 and the cinema screen
is so dark I just put a piece of
popcorn up my nostril.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

We press play on Remember the Titans
and hope this will be the time
that Gerry Bertier doesn’t get paralysed
from the waist down in a car crash
and gets to finish the football season
on the field with his mates
and he and Julius Campbell move out
to the same neighbourhood together
and get old and fat. We could do with
some of that.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

and I carried on.
My arms hit the ceiling
and the floor caught my knees.
He was outside ASDA,
his eyes long enough
to reach my top floor flat
on a tight angle. I took my T-shirt off.
I threw my hips against the window,
watched his baguette salute the sky.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The barman asks if we’re together
and the woman on my right laughs
as hard as she would
in a poem designed to beat myself up.
I let my ego grow a pair of gruesome wings
made of old skin and greying pubic hair
and crash through the wall,
leaving bits of guts stuck to brick and cement.
I fly my way into a reluctant sky,
rooftops pretend to chat to each other.
I go fast enough for my spine to reject me,
the pores in my skin to scream bloody murder
and the corners of my lips rip wider
than a Chelsea smile saying
Haha, yeah, we’ve never met.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

When he goes into a café to do some writing
he holds his backpack high in front of his chest,
long enough for staff and customers to clock
its shape, colour, size, and the fact it belongs
to him so, in the event he needs to go
to the toilet at any point throughout the day
and anyone tries to steal or damage the bag,
someone will stop them. He does the same
thing with his heart.

© Carl Burkitt 2023