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

talking about the shops that used to be
where the current shops are now
and how it wishes it could still eat toffees.
It knows everything about nothing important
and can’t quite pronounce the names
of some of the Premier League’s best players.
It likes eating dark chocolate. It likes drinking port.
It whistles when it’s happy and doesn’t tell anyone
when it’s struggling.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

His smile came to work with him today
and asks me if semi-skimmed milk is OK.
It is. He’s delighted! He holds up a little jug
and says Moo. It’s physically impossible
not to join in so we Moo; two grown men
pretending we are in a field feeling grass
on our bellies, whipping our tails against flies,
wondering how low clouds can get,
ignoring the motorway taking people
to places they do not want to be.
His boss jokes she can always give him
his Barista in Training badge straight back
and we are human again, ordering tea,
making tea, wishing each other a nice day.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

I live in America
and the school bus comes to my front door.
I have a knapsack stuffed with books
and super sharp pencils. I spent the morning
on my skateboard wearing a baseball cap
backwards with a picture of some kind of eagle
or bear holding a hockey stick. I’ve got shorts on
and biceps I can kiss. The bus driver knows
my name and asks me how my parents are
and I tell them they’re hard at work but it’s all cool.
I sit a few rows from the back seat
next to a dude called Brad who teaches me
how to blow bubbles with my bubble gum.
We chat about what England might be like,
all red phone boxes and wonky teeth. We wonder
if the people there are as sad as they look
and imagine what vinegar on fries tastes like.

© Carl Burkitt 2023