The words melt from his tongue with the tiredness
of someone who’s binge-watched 40 TED Talks.
His mate agrees and turns down another pint
because it’s a lot darker since the clocks turned back
and he’d hate to slip on his new driveway
with no-one else on the other side of the front door.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
They look scary
or scared, as if there’s a difference.
I like the droopy one
at the back of the display,
as if melted from thinking
too much.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
I’m looking over a wall
into a stranger’s garden
because my eyes are tall.
There’s a green plastic slide
covered in mould, greener
than the green of the green
plastic slide. It looks like a tree
has a cold and sneezed
its leaves absolutely everywhere.
I can see a trampoline, a football,
a vegetable patch, a broken pogo stick.
I’m looking at the path because
my feet keep taking my eyes
away from what excited them.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
The cashier hands me back my bank card
and the tips of our thumbs collide.
We feel our bones connect
like a Right Said Fred head-butt
and I’m desperate to tell him
I am in more pain than he’ll ever know.
He thanks me for popping in
and goes back to doing things with his day.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
Written in a Lewis Buxton workshop
Yellow mimics
the sound of a Formula 1 car,
the exposed brick café explodes
with teeth and cheekbones.
Yellow has new walking boots,
lines up toy fire engines
on an invisible table top carpark,
orders a disappointing looking
chocolate muffin because yellow
believes in sleeping giants.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
The kitchen was all that existed –
a dead island with a dead breakfast island
in the middle of it. The floor tiles were
a forgotten chessboard, the oven
a 6th November morning bonfire. We climbed
in through the thinning entrance
like pennies into a vending machine,
the mossy windows refused to show
the snack of us. My pint glass was
a yellow moustache, glued to lips
yet to learn how to talk about weather.
The chairs were ghosts – shot horses,
lying on their sides. The bottle of Lambrini
misread the tone of why we were there
and sang shanties until the night gave up.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
There’s a wafer in your hand
as round as the world.
There’s a sausage
in your other hand
remembering a time
of more linear meals.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
surveying
the day for bombs
spoken and unspoken,
a chance to stay
and to not.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
He couldn’t believe the reductions of the fish
in Waitrose yesterday. £1.99 for a sea bass
the size of your forearm, 99p salmon steaks
as thick as a front door, haddock
as wide as his late wife’s smile only 80p.
He ended up handing over a twenty
to the checkout guy and played a game of Jenga
trying to fit it all into the freezer.
He gave the haddock to his neighbour
because she likes haddock
but he’s keeping the rest, just in case
a special occasion arrives one day.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
It’s not every day you meet someone with the same name as a mythical figure from the legend of King Arthur. But here you are, fake burger cheese yellow t-shirt and baggy blue tracksuit bottoms, holding a softball bat. Wikipedia says your namesake is best known as a magic man. It’s not until after you strike the ball that I’m told you are blind. In the pub, you tell me you enjoy working for the charity between bites of pork scratchings and taking the piss out of my pitching arm.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
Carl tells tales 