You’re a peculiar looking bugger.
I wouldn’t put a penny on you at the Grand National.
You couldn’t handle a jockey’s weight.
The good news is, when I’m forced
to put you down, I can pull you up again.
You’d be lost in a motorway-side field.
Drivers would certainly stop and stare.
I’m still not used to seeing
bras and pants draped over you
like a wiry blue Tom Jones.
I’m excited to see you try on socks
a hundred times too small for you.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
Let’s get beautifully confused.
Let’s swim through typos
and backwards phrases.
Let’s do the opposite of milk.
Let’s wear veggie nugget waistcoats,
swap heads, skim peach stones across the sky.
Let’s read the wrong bus time table,
put sugar on our ice rink chips,
comb each other’s skin with secrets,
dip penguins in pints of gravy.
Let’s hold the hands of clocks
and take selfies of the past.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
You’re two feet long and nailed down.
You’re a hello hostage forced to small talk
with every shoe, flip flop and wellie.
Nice weather for ducks
I hear you cry
after rainy forest walks.
You hold on to shit for weeks,
struggle to brush off daily swipes
from the arrogant door
flapping its oily gums.
You sit and listen,
sharpening your bristles.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
If I’m the one in charge
of locking the door when we leave the flat,
I always put the key in the lock
and shut the door and feel my heart
bounce against my arse hole
in fear I’ve left my keys behind
and locked us out for 7,000 years.
When I feel the magic piece of metal in my hand
it feels like it could open pathways to worlds
where I can sing like Beyoncé, climb walls
like Spider-Man with a jaw like Batman, eat Skips by the skipful without making
my hips full and speak fluent dog.
A key in my hand when I think it’s left behind
is a chance to start over.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
That morning the sun was out in a way
it made London look like it had just been born.
All stranger smiles and movie vibes.
My feet were gentle springs on pavement.
Walking towards the studio to make you
my palms were Patrick Swayze,
my ears were my best friend Whoopi Goldberg.
I was as light as a ghost, baby.
But when our hands touched I didn’t understand.
My thumbs were stab wounds,
my fingers broken car crash bones.
You were a sloppy corpse, drunk in the afternoon.
London died.
The bowl looked alright though.
I sometimes use it for olives.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
Every so often,
I’d say about once or twice a week,
the window in my living room
makes a little click noise
loud enough to get my attention.
It sounds like a miniature sone tapping against it.
But it isn’t that.
If feels more structural,
something moving that shouldn’t be moving.
I have literally no idea what it is.
Genuinely.
There’s no pattern to when it happens.
I’m clueless.
I like to think it’s the walls stretching
one inch too far after an afternoon nap,
its bones saying Pop!
But it isn’t that.
I have absolutely no clue.
I don’t think I have the energy to know.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
I’ve never felt more embarrassed.
Steam was coming out of my ears.
It was the day I completely lost control
of what I do and why I do it.
Life was a meta spiral
of my brain not knowing who it was.
You loved it.
You stood all proud,
your squeaky hinges giggling
as I opened the packaging
and used you to iron
a brand new iron board cover.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
A woman wearing tight black cycling shorts,
a thick, fluffy, bright orange fleece jacket
and brown leather high heeled boots
strutted past my flat eating a mid-morning ice lolly.
She wasn’t licking it. She was biting it.
Each crunch of tooth screamed
All bets are off mate!
Her frozen breakfast was made up of colours
from streets I haven’t been through in weeks.
Her hooped earrings were moons of planets
she’d invented. I bet her living room is fun.
She probably has sofas stuck to the ceiling
like The Twits, but loves it.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
Kitchen cork notice board,
you hang out by the fridge door
clinging on to varied chaos.
You’re all out of date Big Mac vouchers, garish third place rosettes, free Boots eye tests.
You’re Christmas at Morden Hall brochures,
a sweaty festival wristband, the yawns
of business cards from conference rooms.
You’re weekly reminders of which bin’s next,
unattended Spring 2019 Art Exhibition leaflets.
You’re pictures of inside the universe,
a scanned network of nerves ready to dance.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
I can feel a promotion looming.
Something like Co-Director of the Universe,
Chief Executive of Skull Protection,
PR Director of Your Achievements. I’m set for
Digital Media Officer of Expanding Limbs Limited,
Arse-Wiper of the Stars, PA to Zeus.
I’m gonna be Administrator of Numbers and Shapes
Finance Director of Future Endeavours,
Head Deer in Headlights.
I can feel a promotion looming and I’m woefully
underqualified. But then we all lie on our CV.
© Carl Burkitt 2020
Carl tells tales 