We fill the boot alone together:
me today, you 40 years ago.
I can’t drive, so try to be useful.
You deliver goods and invented Kerplunk.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The wrestling podcast host says
time travels at different speeds
at different life stages
and I’m 13 years old for two decades,
lying on the sofa in my pants,
looking up at your body on the banister,
waiting to feel the warmth of you
travel through my chest.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Edith Bowman is talking about Steven Spielberg
and I’m thinking about stories that end well.
Edith Bowman is talking about Alex Ferguson
and hard work and staying young and I can see
autumnal scarves wrapped around a neck
holding up a made up face on a Sunday afternoon.
Edith Bowman is talking about Quentin Tarantino
and I can smell boiled gammon, hand cut
white bread, the swear words of Samuel L. Jackson
weaving in and out of the telly like crotchet needles.
Edith Bowman is talking about Steven Spielberg
and how she cried after interviewing him
and I join her. It’s raining in London
and my phone just told me
the matriarch left the family last night.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

One day I’ll be a graffiti artist.
I will scurry around town in broad daylight
scrawling my tag or name or witty puns
or motivational messages or the portraits
of you inside my chest on skyscrapers
as big as your memory.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

She limps into the cafe, her legs
in racing car green sports shorts.
Her feet are Colgate white and her torso is
a Nike tick. She spots her neighbour
doing a crossword and tells her the news.
I wish I was doing something wild, she says,
but I was just bobbing up and down with the grandkids.
Perhaps I’ve been training too hard lately.
Luckily it just popped straight back into the joint.
She says her goodbyes and hobbles to buy
a vegan meatball wrap.
Not good for you, all that moving about,
her neighbour says in my direction
before reading the clue for two down:
11 letters, surname of former lead singer
of the Pussycat Dolls.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The chalkboard
outside the pub had
ALL HOP IS NOT LOST
written across it
and he wandered in
wondering who to tell
about the typo.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

That player is absolute dog shit, your mate says.
He messed up there, but you can’t get to where
he is without being a good player, you say.
I really hope they get relegated, your mate says.
They’re annoying, but I’d hate to see people
lose their jobs in a cost of living crisis, you say.
Veggie pizza? Jesus Christ, are you my
mother-in-law? your mate says.
Ha. It’s nice and I’m keen to kill fewer pigs, you say.
Sweetcorn is bloody disgusting, your mate says.
Fuck you, you say.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

He’s telling his mates about the episode
of A Place in the Sun: Winter Sun
and how the luxury apartment the couple
from Sunderland visited was £1.5 million
and that reminds him that some football players
could afford that with a month’s pay
and that reminds him how easily the full back
let the winger past him last night and that reminds
him how his grandson is getting bigger
than him and that reminds him he forgot
to order a biscuit with his coffee and that reminds
him and that reminds him and that reminds him.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Your wires look like human veins,
your skin is tight enough to know itself. 
I’m yet to find joins or screws or an off button.
There’s no other explanation
for how you keep going forward.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The extension of the house down the road
has different coloured bricks than the rest of the
building. The numberplate I just saw ended in CAT
and I welled up because the car wasn’t a Jaguar.
I get tired sometimes
like a jigsaw puzzle with the wrong picture.
Someone told my son the other day
to avoid the cracks in the road when walking.
It’s a fun game, they said. My bones saw his
sigh at his new lifelong curse.

© Carl Burkitt 2023