You took off your elbow pad off,
threw it to the back row of the arena
with ease, skipped over my broken body
on the floor, bounced off the ropes
quicker than Cupid’s bow firing an arrow.
You stopped, stood over me,
inhaled the cheers from a crowd
who knew what was coming.
And with that you
dropped your elbow onto my heart,
the ref slapped the mat
one…two…three hundred years and more.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Written while listening to ‘You and Me on the Rock’ by Brandi Carlisle.

You take my hand
to make me feel like I am protecting you
while you walk across a one-foot high wall.
Your body is doing all the work,
my hand could be doing anything:
learning how to make pizza dough,
sewing up the holes in your pyjama trousers,
remembering how to fold stunt paper airplanes,
picking at the scabs of when I used to hurt myself,
tracing the shape of your body
from the curls we share to the fingers
you used to take mine in your first minutes
on a wall we’re walking forever.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Written while listening to ‘Thunder Road’ by Bruce Springsteen.

In your hometown
the sun takes its time
to peel off its duvet clouds.
But it’s there every day
when it rains short As, cobs and barms.
Wet tarmac is a disco ball
for you to dance through
the orchestra of strangers playing
“Alright pal”. You know the names of
landlords, dry cleaners, the uncle of
two friends from your pre-school.
You have chosen between blue and red.
You are asked about. You are recognised.
You are seen. Trains are frequent –
a chance for you to take time
as seriously as it takes you.
You, my son, are a northerner.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Written while listening to ‘My Hometown’ by Bruce Springsteen.

He likes living in the top floor flat.
He says it makes grown ups down
on the street look smaller than him.
Not many toddlers get to
see the top of a bin lorry or wave
at the local dry cleaner pretending
they are sitting on a cloud. Planes are
not intimidating when you can grab them
out of the sky. Is morning even a morning
without making eye contact
with a family of sparrows standing on
the chimney of a second hand furniture shop?
He says he likes living in the top floor flat
and promises we’ll have a garden
when his daddy is an adult.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Written while listening to ‘Such Great Heights’ by Iron & Wine.

He ripped the thatched roof off a pub once…
I say it, not for the first time, to the question
“What’s your dad like?”
The gap before I add “…with his lorry”
gives the person I’m talking to the chance
to get a scale of the man’s hands. It sets up
an image of outrageous shoulders
that carried a family’s safety
through dark country lanes and long night shifts.
It presents a power to remove danger,
threaten anything that may hold us back.
The lorry delivers the clumsiness,
the clown make up on a circus lion
desperate to bite the head off anything that teases.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Written while listening to ‘Highway to Hell’ by AC/DC.

Robbie Robertson is talking
in the middle of his own song
as if there are no rules to anything.
My son is trying to put a Cheerio
down the straw of his drink
and my cells are shaking at the fact
they also live in a daredevil.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Written while listening to ‘Somewhere Down the Crazy River’ by Robbie Robertson.

I gave being a lumberjack a go.
I’d grown the beard years earlier
to hide the gentleness of my cheek skin
and my wardrobe was already stuffed
with checked shirts because a guy in a pub
once said I suited them. I bought a trucker
style cap with ‘Lumberjacked’ embroidered
on the front and a massive axe
from a massive axe shop. The bloke serving me
had a chest built for getting lost in and he taught me
how to swing without being afraid.
Once I’d put my new steel toe cap boots on
I walked into the woods with my axe
over my shoulder. I sang songs about meat
and biceps and chopped a dead tree
down to the size of my torso. I yanked
a heart-sized lump of wood off it and shoved
it in my satchel to remember my weekend.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Written while listening to ‘Where The Wild Things Are’ by Luke Combs.

My Walkman is broken
and I just forgot to take my headphones
out of my ears –
at least that’s what I’m telling
the bigger boys on the bus home
while trying not to weep
to Chris Martin’s beautiful voice
holding my freshly made scones
for Mum in home economics class.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Written while listening to ‘The Scientist’ by Coldplay.

The first song I laughed at in a funeral
was the theme tune to Winnie the Pooh
as a Charlton Athletic fan was carried
in a coffin down a crematorium aisle.
At least 95% of us had no idea
Winnie was a family nickname for him –
on account of his head shape and giggle –
but we all whistled the tube over ham sandwiches
that afternoon. I smiled while Mr Big Stuff
sang a teenage Mercedes apprentice
through a different crematorium
past the borrowed suit on my body trying
to retain its Geography revision. I ate a flapjack
watching the live stream of an uncle’s
COVID-19 funeral. I caught pixelated tears
on my finger tips and strained to hear any music.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Written while listening to ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ by Queen.

My backpack is carrying a box of pick and mix
bought using my £5.00 Christmas Woolworths
voucher from Uncle Norman. I used the technique
passed down to me from my brother:
a layer of foam sweets, a layer of bon bons,
a layer of foam sweets, a layer of boiled sweets,
a layer of foam sweets, and so on to maximise
the tub’s airspace. The lady on the till
used a bit of sticky tape to keep the lid down.
I’m walking to the newly opened Swindon Subway
to buy a bacon footlong on Italian herb bread
and I’m probably going to buy American Pie on DVD.
The sun is shining because this is a fictional memory,
which means Alicia fancies me and I’m not going to
lose the hurdles final. I’m still too scared to try
skateboarding, but I’m head to toe in Vans and Tony
Hawk is waiting for me to get the number 1 bus home.

Carl Burkitt 2024

Written while listening to ‘The Middle’ by Jimmy Eat World.