It’s 2am and his bed is sweat. Colin is
ex footballer Gary Neville’s dad,
Neville Neville. He is on a sport podcast,
chatting about the importance of hard work
over talent, recounting his days as a lorry driver,
how he would get up at 4am to drop off
furniture in Davenport so he could get back
to Manchester by 11am and volunteer
at the local cricket club, then pick his kids up
from school to take them to football
and netball club. He is convincing people
he came back to life to tell his children
he’s so proud of them. Meredith and Christina
ask Colin to scrub in and do the appendectomy
surgery for them. An emergency has come up
but they cannot tell him what. It’s 3am.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

He hasn’t scored for nearly six weeks,
his goal bonus sits in the coffers
of a club he can’t remember signing for.
He’s read a bit too much
about the side effects of heading a ball
and the lads on the wings just can’t
get it to his feet. There’s a good chance
his legs aren’t getting him to the box
as fast as they used to. His mind wanders.
When he pulls on the famous white shirt
he thinks about the gods that once wore it.
He looks up at the clouds when the whistle goes
and thinks he can hear them talking
about how they always pictured him in goal
with arms like that. His mind wanders.
He likes looking at the grass. His mind wanders.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

You walk
through the kind of day
that birds tackle
two worms at a time,
the moon hangs out
with the sun until brunch,
Labradors poo
on a street bin
like they know how
to read its sign,
toddlers learn
how to say
This coffee shop is beautiful.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Lads gather:
All biceps on tattoos,
Curly hair underneath
Red and white woolly hats spidering its way
On to foreheads,
Square jaws,
Shoulders wider than goalposts. It’s
Early for a weekend. They
Smell like eggs and ale and strawberry vape.
They’re here to twat each other
In the name of sport. But first a
Catch up, how are yous,
Kisses on cheeks before kick off.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Not knowing what to do with himself
he peeled off his skin like a wet suit,
gave it a shake, and watched the dust
and crumbs and fluff sprinkle off
like sand and salt from beach days
he always promised her they’d have.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The tarmac is hard enough
to remind your hips they are alive.
Surprise surprise, they scream,
you didn’t take care of the muscles
that drag you through the day.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Mondays are pretty quiet in here
but the Morris dancers arrive at 10pm.
That’s a poem. She bought £285 worth of wine
without telling me and each bottle was the same.
That’s a poem. The curry house closed down.
That’s a poem. I was sat against the radiator
texting dad eating a scotch egg. That’s a poem.
I went to the Google offices 10 years ago
and left with 12 Cheesestrings in my pocket.
That’s a poem. Graeme died. That’s a poem.
She reads a book at work but not a good one
so it doesn’t matter when she’s pulled away
and asked to pour a pint. That’s a poem. Jim died.
That’s a poem. There’s a crack in the floorboard
that no-one will ever notice, but when they do
they’ll wonder how we keep going every day
when everything breaks, it always breaks. A dog
walked into the pub alone. That’s a poem.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Her seat was empty, unless
you take into account the smells of meals
he’d cooked her over the years:
vegetarian meatballs, three bean chilli,
chorizo and red onion on seeded toast;
the fingernail marks gripping
on to the arms during her son’s favourite
horror film; the decades old milk stains;
gossip stitched into the upholstery; grief
deep in the cushions. Her seat was empty
until it wasn’t.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The clown was chucking
buckets of fake water:
chip shop chip-sized confetti
made of cheap tin foil.
The front row gasped
loud enough for a boy
at the back of the circus
tent to start sweating.
It didn’t matter what
the usher or his mother
said, the water was
razor blades and he
needed to tell someone
what he saw.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The sun was doing its job this afternoon.
A man walked past us holding two hacksaws.
He had grey hair, almost as silver
as the blades in his hands,
and a pair of legs on a mission. He didn’t
slice us up into a million pieces
because it was the kind of day
he didn’t slice us up into a million pieces.

© Carl Burkitt 2023