We’re walking up a ramp outside the bookies:
a poured concrete Everest for five-inch feet.
We reach the top, turn around, go down, and start again. The rocket on your wellies
thinks it’s doing all the work. We don’t say anything.
A couple we saw earlier in the park stop.
The man says he doesn’t envy me
having to walk around with you all day.
The woman shuffles on her feet, rearranges
the conker brown scarf around her neck, looks at your face and says, I’ve never met anyone
climb this mountain as well as you can.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

I catch myself looking at a face
that never asked to be here
and now has a faint red rash across
its forehead, canines stabbing
their way through unknowing softness,
earthquakes of rage shaking bones
when its lips can’t catch up
with the thoughts in its brain.
A train drives by and the face
allows itself to forget everything,
it understands nothing but smiles.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

After Guy Garvey

sneaking up on us
with the footsteps of people
we’ve only met when your lids open.
What did they see?
Where did they sleep?
You rub them with fists,
desperate to keep them awake
as not to miss us spinning the sun away.
I look at you looking
and slow every move down,
wondering what you’ll steal
and what you’ll improve.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Its name is written in pink and blue
fluorescent light tubes in front of a dying sky
on top of an immaculate roof. The tiles
shine in any weather. The menu has
pancakes glazed in honey, buffalo chicken wings,
milkshakes for dipping French fries.
The staff have smiley faces hand-drawn
next to their names on their name badges.
The counter top is a red carpet for the weary.
The car park has plenty of space for people
who enjoy selling themselves short,
hiding their power to change a day.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

I’m urinating down a country lane
rocking your pram backwards and forwards
to keep you sleeping and it’s slow,
the time it takes for the hills to roll
across my eyes and the smell
of sheep negotiating the quick stream
and the sun hiding behind clouds
whispering to them to do something.
We zip up and walk
over a bridge towards the middle of our chest.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

is an owl running away,
the stiff pedal of a bin,
a melting Dairy Milk,
a dry towel, dead tea,
a box of cracked bones,
records never spinning,
questions stuffed in throats,
a daft ending.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

Don’t take the piss. Don’t be sarcastic.
Don’t throw the contents of your life down it.
Don’t whisper to it. Don’t shy away.
Speak up, tell it a joke, take the time to
paint your story across it. Hold its hand.
Check it’s OK, even if it tells you it’s fine.
Tell it about the time you forgot
who you were and why you were there.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

On the other side of the blinds
is a blackness thick
like the tyres of a tractor.
It’s still, nothing to do
but think about when
it could move with the ease
of determined wind. We’re still.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

and we struggle
to know what’s keeping us safe
and what’s holding us back.

© Carl Burkitt 2022

them with the cheese in their sandwiches,
then with the cream in their coffee,
them with their laptops, them with their meeting
notes, them with their Pom Bear crumbs
dotted across their meeting notes,
them with their own voices,
them with pointing their fingers at each other,
her with the softness of his hands,
him with the reaching up to her.

© Carl Burkitt 2022