Do you ever think about the moments
when you saw something for the first time?
Like your mum presenting you
to the reflection of your baby self,
or hospital car park rain splashing
against your newborn skin.
Can you remember popping your first white head?
Imagine seeing a soft boiled egg for the first time,
watching your dad finally
hitting six skims with a seaside stone,
breaking your tastebuds’ ice cream virginity.
I have no memory of my feet meeting their first puddle.
I wonder if they took the sensation for granted.
I hope they smiled in the slosh.
I hope they marvelled as the ripples
danced around them.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

After John Yau

I want to put one foot after the other after the other.
I want to move my mouth in shapes people understand.
I want to grow eyes that see more than me,
legs that wrap around the universe.
Just once I want my skin to feel like my tongue
on a post-roast Sunday afternoon sofa.
I want balloons for lungs, a sponge for brains.
I want aches from effort, fillings from fun.
I want to be responsible for what destroys me.
I want to melt into the roots of a tree.
I want to remember I am buckets of water.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

We clicked shuffle on our genes.
We let our hits and misses mix
and lent in, head first,
to hear our silent soundtrack.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Walking home after a supermarket night shift.
Packing away a sleeping bag in the spare room.
Sitting on the sofa watching the news.
Queuing up to use a nightclub loo.
Dicing eight carrots and two white onions.
People die when I do boring things.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I’ve been thinking about horses
and how their legs are longer
than some humans I’ve met.
I’ve been thinking about horses
and how their penises are longer
than some humans I’ve met.
I’ve been thinking about how horses
are the only animals to wear shoes,
that I know of.
I’ve been thinking about how horses
are the only creatures who have to
have their shoes nailed on.
I’ve been thinking about horses
and how they walk
within 90 minutes of being born
and how I can’t wait to see
a baby gallop through a field one day.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Some days I’m double flamingo.
I’m Shredded Wheat with sugar and raisins,
I’m socks and slippers, I’m pickled gherkins,
I’m no shirt and no pants,
I’m a whole packet of mini Twisters.
Some days I’m jogging bottoms, I’m disco,
I’m no alarms and large chip shop chips,
I’m moisturiser and peanut butter with spoons.
Some days I’m staring at the floor,
picking at skin, second guessing everything.
Some days I’m retracing steps, bags under eyes,
nervous about the sky.
Some days I’m double flamingo.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

A hundred uncollected shirts dutifully queued up,
abandoned in shut down dry cleaners.
Crisp, pressed best stood to attention
checking invisible wrist watches,
anxious they’d be late.
Haunted rows of ghosts from weddings past
longed for flesh to cling to, silently
mumbling small talk through imagined mouths
as their open necks breathed indefinitely.
Buttons prayed to be fiddled by finger tips
as they cursed the stains that imprisoned them.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I love the extra beep on a microwave.
The one that beeps
a few minutes after the beep
that says the cooking’s done.
The one designed to tell us
we’ve forgotten about our warmed up treat.
It’s like a digital dinner echo.
A calendar reminder set by a you
you can’t remember.
A cuboid Samaritan urging you to go on.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I can’t remember a day
I haven’t thought about the guys
in a documentary whose job it was
to use an axe to chop off human sized lumps
of solidified cooking oil, discarded down sinks,
from the walls of English sewers.
Their skin looked like gravel drowning in gloss paint,
their hair was butter-drenched spaghetti
and they refused to breathe through the nose.
The smaller of the two had a smile
twice the size of the blade in his hand.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Magicians who pull rabbits out of their hats
must be very content with life.
You never see a magician pulling out
rent money or friends or confidence.
If I was a magician I would use my hat
to pull out salt and vinegar Pringles,
long sleeve shirts that make it to my wrists,
words I wish I’d said years ago.
I certainly wouldn’t cut my wife in half
even if I could put her back together again.

© Carl Burkitt 2020