People are sat around the dinner table,
their plates stained with gravy
and scraps of veg from the final helping
they knew deep down they didn’t need.
They’ve pulled their Christmas Crackers
and are reading daft jokes,
placing primary coloured hats
on their heads, playing with their toy prizes.
I’m with them on a chair by the internal
garage door holding on to my prize:
not a jumping plastic frog, metal puzzle,
miniature tweezers, or giant paper clip,
but a £20 British Home Stores voucher.
No one believes me, and no one will ever
believe me. I bought some new grey slippers.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

He’s been up since 4am
flogging fish at Billingsgate Market.
It’s 7pm and his fingers have the strength
to beckon us on to the road.
He doesn’t want us to slip
on the skin of ice that’s covering the path.
You are in my arms. He says he likes your hat
and you wave and he waves and says
he has a daughter a year older than you.
His other two kids are teenagers
and the age gap is wonderful for babysitting
like last night when he danced at a gig
with his wife until the morning arrived
with the smell of fresh fish and opportunity.
He tells you he’s off for a long bath
and you ask if he will play with any toys.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Wooden barstools
stand like photocopiers
watching colleagues
through spring,
summer, autumn,
placing bets
on which bum
will sit.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Her blazer is a universe of achievement badges.
She’s one of three Earthlings doing their homework
in a 4.30pm Costa Coffee slurping smoothies
discussing the properties of Mercury and Venus
and the timeline in which Pluto was a planet
and then not a planet and then a dwarf planet
and how Mars got its name and Jupiter’s 80 moons
and Saturn’s seven rings and how Neptune’s years
are 165 of ours and no-one laughs at Uranus.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

You are circling The Two Ronnies
in the Christmas issue of The TV Times
(that you didn’t buy) with a borrowed ballpoint pen
you needed to lick to get going. It’s your twelfth circle.
You’re wondering how many VHS tapes we have
and ask, again, what time lunch will be tomorrow
because you cannot miss the Queen’s speech
but you can’t be heard from the kitchen
so you ask, louder, what time lunch will be tomorrow
because you cannot miss the Queen’s speech.
Patient slippers walk into the living room
to deliver your answer. You doff your flat cap
and ask me if I’ve written anything lately
and I tell you how I’m not really into that
anymore.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

It’s sitting between them,
Coca-Cola red with VALERY
written across it in black ink.
It’s about half an inch thick
and the length of a share bar of Dairy Milk.
Valery’s eyes are staring into
the mouth of the person
who placed her card on the table.
She’s trying not to look all the way down.
She distracts her thoughts
with a sip of Toblerone hot chocolate
and does what she can to listen
to opinions about consumerism.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

It’s snowing and you will not wear your gloves
because your fingers need to hold on
to a chocolate Christmas tree biscuit.

We went into Greggs
to try the vegan festive bake
but the sweet branches were irresistible.

I said you could eat it on the train if you like
with a flippant tongue to keep us moving
and here you are twenty minutes later,
the Patron Saint of Literalism, in my arms,
still using yours to hold on to temptation.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

with its fairy light eyes,
chocolate for breakfast,
the days all turning into one.

Christmas looks good on you,
the way tinsel
turns green into gold.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Someone told me once
that the lines on a football pitch were snow

and I was as happy as Robbie Fowler
celebrating a goal. Manchester is

covered in innocence waiting
for fresh prints to come along and crush it.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

A sequinned penguin
has the tip of a Christmas tree
up its bum hole. It’s looking

over the living room
with a twinkling red hat and scarf.
Its eyes are silver. Its beak is gold.
Its chest is completely empty.

© Carl Burkitt 2022