I am Robert De Niro’s dad.
With that tea towel on your head,
blue robe on your shoulders,
not yet five years from your birth –
last year’s school nativity
was too much for your mouth to explain.
When your colleague passed you
the microphone, you understandably handed it
to your best friend to carry on the show.
But today you are Host Number 50.
The character who won’t stop dancing.
Your neck is a Santa red bow tie.
Your chest is buttoned up shirt
smiling with candy canes and Christmas trees
stuffed inside a pick up truck.
Your heart is a megaphone shouting:
“And they have cross desert wastes
to be with us this evening”
to a sea of parents who do not know
how you were forced to drow 12 months ago.

Carl Burkitt 2025

The model railway owners are lined up in church
as neatly as their train track layouts are.
Thermos flasks and lunchboxes wait patiently

as they show off miniature steam engines,
painted trees, plastic mountains, faceless men,
fake rivers shining under strip-lighting.

The enthusiast is pointing his electric finger,
asking questions beyond his years,
holding in the poo he desperately needs.

Carl Burkitt 2025

I got awoken in Cheadle Hulme Costa
by a man wearing a coat with buttons
more suited to the chest of a gingerbread man.
Fortunately, I did not bite his fingers off
as he explained where and when I was.
I want to be good at small talk
so I offered him a hot chocolate. He shook
his head and said cocoa sends him to sleep.
I thank him for pulling me back
to reality and said I’m recovering from a virus.
He walked backwards to his seat
and put large headphones over his ears.

Carl Burkitt 2025

His smile is first class
and I’m not shying away from the pun.

It sends me to a new world
where joining the queue was worth it.

Carl Burkitt 2025

No one on this 12:21 train knows
I was in the shower 11 minutes ago.
The chap to my left has his top button undone,
tie pulled down a few inches,
like his morning meeting was a boxing match.
The woman opposite me has eight shopping bags.
I can see a broccoli nestled between eggs
and a roll of Father Christmas wrapping paper.
The man to my right is typing the word ‘stress’
with his fingers on a phone that looks exhausted.
I can still feel the mint body scrub in my bum
and taste the beer I might have in a bit.

Carl Burkitt 2025

She isn’t saying much,
just letting the soft soles of her outdoor Crocs
float her through the aquarium.
Her children smile at green sea turtles,
hide from baby sharks, laugh at the sting ray’s face.

She softly explains the piranha skull
they’re looking at is dead and cannot bite them.
When her husband tries to get her attention,
she snaps her jaws to say she’s busy with the kids.

The sign on the wall reads:
Rabbitfish are a very peaceful species,
and predators tend to leave them alone
because of their venomous spines.
I decide to write a poem.

Carl Burkitt 2025

I tell her I’ve been married for 7 years.
She tells me she’s been married for 57.
“What’s your secret?” I ask
like a local journalist running out of ideas.
“Don’t waste time talking to me,” she winks.

Carl Burkitt 2025

He’s standing in the sea
with his arms outstretched,
knees bent, waving
imaginary locks on his bald head.
“He wishes he tried surfing years ago,”
his daughter says to me on the sand.
I watch him stroke his grey beard,
salt water glistening on cheek wrinkles
and lifts one leg out of the tide
like a flamingo. “Cocky sod,”
says his wife from a sunbed.

Carl Burkitt 2025

I want to write a poem about the sea
but my son keeps running away from the tide.
He says it’s a crocodile nibbling his toes.
His cousin is kicking the waves like penalties,
burying each one in the top corner.

Carl Burkitt 2025