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

It’s easy to forget
they’re not talking about me.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

You are already a railway worker,
a donkey impersonator,
a left-footed inverted wing back,
a Weetabix reviewer, a blink of an eye,
a breathing mannequin, a detective,
a midnight talker, a blackberry picker,
an alarm clock, a bullet to a former life.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Look at those little piggies
going to market, staying at home,
having roast beef, having none,
going wee wee wee all the way home.
Look at them in the back seat,
socks in the boot, toenails dancing
in time to a song about fire engines.
Look at those little piggies growing,
ten hairless sausages with knuckles.
Look at those little piggies,
pink aliens taking over the world.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

He rummages in his Stockport County backpack
for his bag of Wine Gums, something sweet
to replace the tone on his tongue
as the pony tail of one his sons bobs
in the tense breeze in the stands and the other asks,
yet again, what the Liverpool score is.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

An old man called Carl has passed out
on TV. The high street is gasping
and the background music feels sad.
Luckily the woman pretending to be a nurse
has learned her script and confirms he’s breathing.
She’s upset when she gets home so eats steak
and drinks wine and does her best to small talk
with a colleague who’s just moved to town.
They have a lot in common. They run away
their problems and can’t stand the admin side
of their jobs. The night is warm, so they stay outside
under countryside stars in comfortable silence.
Tomorrow the old man will die
and the nurse will not have time to be upset
because her boyfriend has started drinking again.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

and you’re waking up yelling NO BIG SPIDER
through a baby monitor we don’t even
keep the volume turned up on
because your room is so close to ours
between walls thinner than a womb.
How long will it be before it is creepy
that we watch you sleep? One eye on you
the other on a phone like a paparazzo
desperate to take a picture of your
vulnerable state.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

He’s up there, the space bastard,
slurping his tea, telling stars to run faster,
picking his nose and rubbing his finger
across the universe. I hear him at night
revving the engine of his 4×4,
farting in a supermarket freezer
and shutting the door to keep the smell in
for the customer behind him to find.
He’s up there, the space bastard,
writing an apology to his dog,
playing Shirley Bassey, nodding
every time his cutlery gets used.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Sitting on the motorway, a pot of Pringles
rolling around the footwell, we are
the words written on a Hovis van.

© Carl Burkitt 2022