unsure
if
they’re
dancing
or dying.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Two flies spinning around the room
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Category Archives: Poems
Words With Friends
I have been invited to play with Magz.
I am being nudged by BarBarBarbara.
Kim.Berley is waiting for me to take my turn.
Deb0rah has just played DAD
and I’m testing out whether or not
ECHINS is a word
while listening to your tongue
slap the back of your teeth
and your lips form new shapes
to punch out a noise
that sounds like DUST or DUNK.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Frog Wardens
Twenty one giant frogs
are dotted around the town,
their thick plastic skin painted
in bright colours. One looks like Spider-Man.
They live to bring the community together
after a difficult 19 months.
The Frog Wardens are wearing lily pad green
t-shirts above pond blue jeans.
Please don’t sit or stand or climb on the frogs.
They are patrolling the area
to ensure children are enjoying the trail
designed for them to count them all
and be exposed to art and imagination
to an appropriate degree.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Food festival near where I live now
Aldo Zilli is teaching us
how to make pasta in the sunshine.
It’s his mum’s recipe. He talks
of Italy with tomato cheeks.
The red mills of Stockport
are surrounding us; every brick
as strong as the accents around me.
A street below us pretends to be Birmingham
for the filming of Peaky Blinders.
My son is wearing a sky blue football top:
one of four shirts he has
representing four different towns.
Aldo says he was joking when he said
he didn’t want to come here.
I feel a prickle in my chest like an old man
in a pub having his nose put out of joint
and my feet sink into the foundations
just a little bit more.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
There is a heart
in the room
next to the one I’m in.
It moves to the sound
of a pack of carrot puffs
opening.
It is the size of a fist
of a creature
with small fists.
It doesn’t know
what it is, but it knows
to keep going.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Yellow
There are sunflowers
on the table in our flat,
sitting bright yellow and open
staring at me every time
I walk into the living room.
They don’t know who I am.
They don’t know what they are.
They are just sitting.
They are open.
They are yellow.
They are open.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
I spent the afternoon as Christian Bale
yelling at the cinematographer
in my mind who won’t stop
standing in my way.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Break
It was a cup of tea:
steam in all the right places,
milk making it biscuit brown,
cup with a badger on the side
and a handle ideal for fingers.
The was no reason
for it to feel as heavy as the room
we were in,
but my wrist buckled
like a soggy Rich Tea
until my jaw did the same.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Seventeen years
My son’s forehead protrudes
like a crash helmet.
There’s not a blemish on it.
It’s soft like the padding
of a brand new goalie glove.
I imagine it growing freckles.
I imagine it growing into the shape
of an Arsenal Football Club canon.
I imagine it growing across the road
outside a midnight country pub.
Today your skin has been gone
longer than it was here
for us to really get to know it.
I imagine it growing.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Are you Harry Kane?
I’m not Harry Kane, no.
My back hurts. There’s a knot
in my hip tied up from all sorts.
I’d like to see Harry Kane
in this wrestling T-shirt and slippers though
lifting this sofa over a brick wall
wondering if this is what it takes
to make friends in your 30s.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
