My tongue is getting ready
to turn grey and tell you
all about the days
we used to lick small squares
with a woman’s head on
to send paper to people we love.
Boring, you’ll say.
You’re right, I’ll think,
before blabbering about duty.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Or go to a wedding with no tie
or tell a rival football fan their team is great
or call an umbrella a brolly
or trim my eyebrows
or sit down when a live band is playing
or do more than just put a thumb up
to a stranger when it looks like
they have things to get off their chest?

© Carl Burkitt 2022

We are in the car looking
for a digger on the motorway.
Or a tractor. Or an ambulance.
Anything to make you happy.
I look at the vein in your neck
and I am 12 years old and not your dad.
I’m on a 24 hour coach to France
or Germany or Mars. We are looking
for anything out of the window.
We’ve eaten all our sweets
and the TV at the front is too quiet
for us to hear the film Miss chose.
We don’t know what to say to the girls
on the row next to us. So we became
rappers. Trickster J and Snazzy C,
hitting you up with a 1, 2, 3.
Tractor! You yell. I’m 35 and my rhymes
are getting lamer.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

The security shutter
on the front door is broken.
She comes to meet me out of nowhere
and leads us through the park
next door. We step over muddy puddles
and between trees and tip
toe through slippery woods and to the back
door of her brand new barbershop.
We walk past her daughter painting
a square room lighter. There are signs
from the Italian restaurant this used to be.
Friends natter on the shop floor,
scattered like the ends of fringes.
Coffee and tea and a chance to chat
about the brain development of a toddler
are offered. The security shutter engineer
fixes everything. A man and his dog
walk in and ask for a trim. For who?
Nobody talks to me about the weather
and a curly cloud lifts.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

The coach driver is chatting
to the PE/Geography/French teacher
who is trying to learn how to teach dodgeball
to a class that don’t seem to respect him.
Just show them the Ben Stiller film,
the coach driver says, an undodgeable
inevitability.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

His pocket coughs up
a torn out crossword from yesterday’s Metro.
His fingers stretch. His pen lid yawns
off the nib. His stomach braces itself
for the sweet chilli chicken wrap
his hand must’ve picked up
by mistake or as a cruel prank.
His phone sits next to a Costa coffee cup
and talks about the Rugby League,
the passionate commentary
mingles with 5 Across and 9 Down in his brain.
He cracks his neck and nods
at the tired man on the seat opposite him
wearing an optimistic floral shirt blowing kisses
at his confused son on the platform.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

My beard has been on my face
for over eight years and I’m still yet to find
the right cream to stop my chin from itching.
I first wore my beard in public
to a friend’s wedding. We sat on tables
in rows like long boats and drank
thick pints of sweet cider wearing sunglasses
because the sky was a bit too bright.
My nose was pink by the end of the day
and my arms danced as though
there were struggling to lift a heavy sword.
I can’t remember what we ate but
I dabbed my top lip more than ever before
because of my brand new moustache.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

I like looking at miniature packets
of far too expensive for what they are
sweets in garden centres, you know,
like pear drops or fudge,
and imagining being the kind of person
who buys them for other people on a whim.
I just grabbed your Mum some humbugs,
I might say. Or, Dark chocolate gingers?
Darren would love those, let’s get some.
I see myself fishing them out of my backpack
later that day while talking about hydrangeas.
I’ll hand them over and shrug my shoulders
in a sort of, Oh, it’s nothing kind of way.
I don’t even mention the price.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

How many is too many?
I’m sat on a train with 20
or 30 or 700 football fans.
Six of them have crates of Corona
to hand out to squawking pals
when they’re dry, glass bottle beaks
to peck away the thoughts.
The colours of their shirts are fabulous;
blood reds, crane yellows, tractor greens.
The uniformed goalpost white trainers
across their feet keep the flock moving together.
The smallest is sat down, wearing all black, nursing a cup of tea, flying into the sun.

© Carl Burkitt 2022