The moon last night
was a perfect crescent.
A sideways smile
at another crap poem
written about it.
I bet the tide
looked very sarcastic.
And wet.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I miss mornings of music festivals
when it looks like the world is over.
Corpses with a pulse clutching toilet rolls
and meandering like retiring Pac-Man ghosts
knackered from a pointless chase.
The smell of bacon and eggs
crashing into the sound of cymbals
and bass drums testing if they’re alive
and a parliament of night owls ignoring the sun
has risen to keep hooting about the past
with their feathers wrapped around warm scrumpy.
I miss the shadows of people I knew
making shapes their bodies whispered
they didn’t know how to do.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

It’s always your eyelashes.
The pines of a Christmas tree
twinkling from the headlights
of buses driving passed our window.
Broom heads ready to get to work.
It’s always your eyelashes
and the way they curve
to the straightness of a death slide
on a south Devon holiday.
A sunflower folding in half.
A family of spiders giggling on their backs.
It’s always your eyelashes.
Miniature rakes dragging me in.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

There’s a rubber duck
in my bathtub these days.
It’s always smiling.
If the water’s too cold – smile.
If the water’s too hot – smile.
If the water’s just right – smile.
I hope it’s OK.
I mean, really.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

My hand is a slice of pizza.
My hand is a nappy shovel.
My hand is a retired ham.
My hand is an old lover.
My hand is a thousand creaky gates.
My hand is a mouse conductor.
My hand is a caravan for veins.
My hand is cotton wool stapled to a desk.
My hand is an overstuffed glove.
My hand knows what it’s up to.
My hand is a liar.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

A giant harness wrapped around the roof
and, before I knew it, a mechanical arm
tore it out of the ground, taking with it
every fingerprint smudge from past
journeys across a faded map.
It took every timetable squint,
every smug on-time passenger look,
every late comer For fuck’s sake.
It took all the small talk and the no talk
and the please stop talking
and the let me know if you want to talk
and the wish we could really talk
and it just took it – bang –
and replaced it with a fresh start.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Dehydrated potato

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I almost cried on my barber today
when he asked me if I thought it was sad
how, at the age of 21,
he didn’t enjoy drinking
or going to parties
or being in large groups
and his best friends are his mum,
his girlfriend, and his boss (in that order)
and his ideal sort of day
is waking up when his body lets him,
having zero plans and resting
both his body and his mind.
When he sprayed my neck
with the scent of cloves and oranges
he’d hand chosen for the festive season,
I replied,
Your life smells pretty content, mate.
His laugh was soft, but long.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

When I’m in a room
that is pitch black
I walk around
with my eyes closed.
I wonder what
I’m scared to see.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I am not the ‘I’
in my poems.
I am the ‘Y’,
shrugging my arms
to the sky
in another day.

© Carl Burkitt 2020