He’s so cool
with his expensively clean,
over-sized silver wristwatch
and Peachy Keen flavoured
Monster energy drink.

He’s so cool,
perfectly postured
with precisely positioned messy hair,
swearing between Hula Hoop bites.

He’s so cool
with his feet up on the train seats.

He’s so cool
with wireless headphones in his ears,
telling his cousin how
he’s “slaying half term”.

Carl Burkitt 2026

He’s recently moved to the North
and doesn’t have a friend to call his home.

I listen to his Australian accent
explain how his son is only three weeks old,
how his girlfriend is yet to fly to England,
how the streets here rain with loneliness.

I offer umbrella-words of comfort
about how strangers smile at you up here,
how landlords and shopkeepers
remember your name up here,
how the sun will surprise you up here.

His accent melts into American
and he tells me his name is Mac.
Sesame seeds grow on his now bready head
and his face is lettuce and tomatoes.

I wake up, frustrated
this poem is just a stupid dream,
and plan to worry about Mac forever.

Carl Burkitt 2026

The train station guard
(is that what he’s called?)
has a Valentine’s rose stuffed

in a hole in his sunrise yellow hi-vis.
I swoon. He nods, and tells my son
to stop “prancing” on the platform.

Carl Burkitt 2026

This is line one
This is line two
This is line three
[This is a line break]
This is the start of the second stanza
Where the poem notices something quirky
About the street I am standing in
[This is a line break]
And these are the last three lines
That relate that quirky street to me
Or my son to make me look good

Carl Burkitt 2026

The teacher is on a yellow stool in the kitchen
with an imaginary register in his hands.

“Mummy?” he says, spitting cheese as he talks.
“Here, sir!” Mummy says, waving back at him.
“You mean ‘Mr Burkitt’.”
“Yes, Mr Burkitt.”

“Daddy?” he says, slurping on his space water bottle.
“Hello Mr Burkitt,” I say, giving a thumbs up.
“You mean ‘Here Mr Burkitt’.”
“Yes, sir.”

Mr Burkitt huffs and begins phonics lesson.
“Oa oa, goat on a boat. Oo oo, look for a book.”
Mummy and Daddy do a great job repeating the sounds
so we’re allowed to play with cars in the living room.

Mr Burkitt sits on the sofa with a biscuit,
proud at all he has achieved.

Carl Burkitt 2026

She wants me to sing James Morrison songs
because she thinks I am James Morrison.
I explain that I am not James Morrison and she winks, because that’s exactly what James Morrison would say. After all, “Who else wears a cap in a pub to blend in?”

She asks me where I’m staying and she’s
pleasantly surprised that James Morrison would stay
in a Welsh caravan with two mates for the weekend.
I explain that I am not James Morrison and she tells me
to sing Broken Strings but I am not James Morrison.

Carl Burkitt 2026

The walk to school was an obstacle course of death.
The puddles hated him. The rain was clenched fists.
The tree branches were the whips of jellyfish tentacles.

If the wind wasn’t spitting ‘Go away!’ in his face
it was pushing his shivering chest to head back home.
But his feet refused to stop moving his scooter forward.

His forehead headbutted the breeze into oblivion.
His gloved fingers punched doubt in the temple.
His five-year-old body was ten times its size.
All because his dad is too scared to learn to drive.

Carl Burkitt 2026

It’s a big choice as a funeral song
for a 16-year-old.
His coffin strutted down the aisle
in my mind’s eye
as me and my mates stood
in borrowed suits not fully grasping
how small the small talk would be at the wake.
Acne does not belong in a crematorium.
I have a memory of his dad trying
to make us laugh and keep us comfortable
around an ocean of ghostly relatives
while his legs kicked below the surface.
The first time my son ran through the living room
and bumped his head on the coffee table
to the sound of a traffic collision,
I was prepared to never leave the house again.

Carl Burkitt 2026

“This is the highest motorway in the UK,”
my wife says (again) behind the steering wheel
with the beautiful predictability
of the Pennine Hills smiling beside me
outstretched with pride of the north.

Carl Burkitt 2026

The trailer in the cinema says,
“Sometimes we need someone
who reminds us that we exist”
and the man in the row behind me
farts. He leans forward to apologise
but all I can hear is his wife’s laughter.

Carl Burkitt 2026