I search
for videos
explaining how to fold
elasticated bedsheets. I’m
useless.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Silently in line.
Tails tucked, heads up, blackened sky.
Nighttime feline guides.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

After David Eagleman

In the afterlife, your chair has just
the right amount of wobble you will not bother
folding a receipt to slide under the slightly
short leg. Your teapot will have enough
for two cups. The book you’re reading will
make you think about the way you live
your life and the cookies will be double
chocolate chip. A strange will say hello
and make a gentle joke about Tuesdays
being the new Wednesday. Your hip
will still hurt, unfortunately, but you will find
a checked shirt with arms that reach
your wrists. There will be crisps and oranges
and summer fruit squash and thin crust pizzas.
A few friends will be there, catching you
up on how they’ve spent the last few years.
They will ask you how you are.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

She’s telling fellow customers, one
by one, gripping her tie-dyed leggings,
knees headbutting each other.
I need a poo. I need a poo.
Her honesty is a bullet
paralysing the generosity of strangers
in the café. I need a poo. I need a poo.
I ask where her mum went.
In there, she points to the toilet door.
She’s having a poo. The door swings open
and a beetroot red hand drags the girl
inside. 10 minutes later, they’re back
at the table next to me colouring in a unicorn.
The girl waves my way.
How was your poo? I ask.
I wasn’t doing a poo, her mum interrupts.
The girl smiles with three teeth
and picks fluff out of her belly button.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The unemployed football manager is eating
a pain au chocolat. He’s lined his wallet, keys,
phone and glasses case up in a trusty flat back four
on the rectangle table in the café. I imagine
microphones being shoved in his face,
customers turning into journalists asking him
why yet another club dismissed him. They will
question his capabilities and he will rub his
surgically repaired knee with a nervous palm.
They will not bring up the three years he spent
in a town he’d never met and how he
dragged them up a division beyond their means
and the two afternoons he let the fans drink
cold beers in Wembley’s sunshine. He starts
watching highlights of last night’s game
on his phone, scribbling notes on a napkin,
as pastry flakes trickle off his stubble
like ideas falling into place.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

You will hate this poem.
Embarrassment will eat your flesh
while your eyes take in one tired man’s thoughts.
Your mind will wish the time it took
reading this was spent holding your son,
giving him the space to be scared
and now that home is your arms.
You will hate this poem.
If it wasn’t for this poem
you could have messaged your friends back
and quietly saved the world.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

I’m watching him doing laps of the patch of green
next to the chip shop. He’s being followed
by his Lassie-shaped dog sniffing fallen leaves.
The man has an ill-fitting chain around his neck,
knuckles as deep as graves,
and lips looking for a forehead.
He’s done about six or seven laps
in the time it’s taken me to find a dry bench
with someone’s name on and work my way through
a cheese and pickle sandwich made
with the care of a mum. He has a face
of someone doing their best to smile at strangers.
Every time he reaches the oak tree in front of me
he kisses his hand and touches the bark.
His dog sits until he moves again
and doesn’t ask any questions.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

David drives his branded van around town
giving doggies their dinners. They sit on driveways
wagging their tails like hands at David
as he pulls up with his doggie dinners.
He has letterheads and business cards
with the words David’s Doggie Dinners
printed on them. He wears a cap with David’s
Doggie Dinners on it and a pair of shorts
embroidered with DDD. He has a folder on
his bookshelf with My Sweet Davie’s
Dog-Dog Din- Dins scribbled on
with a Sharpie and a failed
edible toilet roll product with his logo emblazoned.
The owners of the dogs never thank David
for their doggie’s dinners and he drives home
with a packet of chips from a shop called
King’s Chippy for his wife and daughter
who barely see him.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

They’re chatting about rivets
and hacksaws and my testicles
have disappeared. I’m sitting
on a wonky pub chair
hoping it will break.
I punched my bedroom door
once – the tiny dent lives
in my knuckles and brain
and I’ve never learned
how to put up a shelf.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

I’ll write you a poem one day
with the honesty of Guy Garvey.
I’ll talk about how I will add milk
and butter to your potato face
and mash it with my fist or elbow
and you will look better than ever.
I’ll think about tripping you up
in the corridor with my ill-fitting shoes
and watching you front flip and landing on yours.
I’m not superstitious but if I can get
my heart through this day then
you’ll wake up again.

© Carl Burkitt 2023