He’s on the only leather chair in the cafe,
one leg neatly crossed over the over.
The line in his trousers are sharp
like an origami fold and his jacket is as clean
as a new-starter’s email inbox. There’s a book
on his table with a name like, The Charming Offensive
and he’s telling someone on his Bluetooth headset
how working on Saturday may actually be good
for him – a chance to stay sober at the weekend.
His fingernails are as smooth as pebbles
untouched by a difficult tide. His belt
buckle is a polished smile, his briefcase is
the rib cage of a trusting intern, his coffee mug
a freshly acquired skull.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

There’s a scarecrow in the pub
wearing an orange and black checked shirt.
His straw hair is poking through his trucker hat
and the bottom of his jeans are tied together
rendering his feet missing. But that doesn’t matter,
he doesn’t need to go anywhere. He has everything
in these four walls: thick ale, 70s rock,
a free local newspaper, a heavy set
of double doors preventing the thirsty sparrows
and hungry pigeons flying away from his small talk.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Like every other night
I looked under the bed for monsters
and, like every other night, there were
monsters with teeth made from dead
love letters, hair the shape of homemade CDs,
VHS bones, the groan of an unplayed guitar,
smeared eyes like abandoned watercolour lessons,
the belly of a widowed running vest,
claws as dangerous as the box we must not mention.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Darren found a skeleton in his sandwich.
It was a perfectly to scale adult human skeleton
without a blemish or crack on a single bone,
but, of course, the size of a slice of bread.
It posed many questions:
Why was the skeleton in the sandwich?
How was the skeleton in the sandwich
a perfectly to scale adult human skeleton
but the size of a slice of bread?
What did the tiny adult do for a living?
Where did they buy their clothes from?
What did they used to eat? Did they
have any friends? Where did they live?
We’re they the only adult human that size?
Did they find a community that made them feel
safe? Did it enjoy its own skin?
Darren asked himself all of these questions
roughly 20 minutes after finishing the sandwich.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

A Victorian child was walking their dog
on the patch of green by the chip shop
and we got chatting about the weather.
We used words like ‘nippy’ and ‘crisp’
and ‘this time of year’ and they complimented
the matching woolly hats my son and I
were wearing and how it’s good to be
a part of something as small as small talk
sometimes and I did not mention how
their dog lead did not have a dog at the end of it
or how they were a Victorian child and I could see
through their chest into the non-beating heart.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Around 6am
And 8am
And 9.15am
And 10am and 11.20am and apparently all
Afternoon
A dreadful scream echoed
Around the
House and nobody
Heard it

© Carl Burkitt 2023

I went to the fancy dress party
dressed as myself.
The outfit was cheap and easy
but I had to answer awkward questions
like ‘Who are you supposed to be?’

© Carl Burkitt 2023

I asked my pumpkin spiced latte
what it feels like to be wanted
only once a year and it said
it couldn’t hear me because
A) it was too busy dealing with
an ever-growing queue of smiling
faces that needed it – a group
of people that took time out
of their day to finally give it
the chance to be what it was
put on this earth to be: authentic,
unique, unafraid to stand alone and
B) it didn’t have ears.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

It was foggy.
Like, it’s not safe to walk
into those woods kind of foggy.
But he walked into the woods anyway
and never came back.
It would be easy to think the worst,
that he fell down a hole
or got stolen by men bigger than him
or mauled to death by a wolf.
It would be far easier to think the worst
rather than get used to the fact
an unknown haze
was more attractive than a routine
he could see through like glass.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

We made toffee apples to celebrate
our two year wedding anniversary.
You don’t like them at the best of times
but it was 2020 and there was a two month old
in our living room and we had to try
to be alive. We used chopsticks for sticks
and they just about handled their job.
The toffee didn’t set
and was borderline inedible.
We smiled with teeth
on a sofa we fell asleep on.

© Carl Burkitt 2023