I left a glass of tap water out for so long
my warm desk made it look sparkling.
Window light bubbles floated still
like tiny tourists on spherical see-through lilos.
I moved it into the shade like a skinny beverage god
and felt bad as the H2O holiday makers dissolved
into a pint-sized Dead Sea.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

We put a lot of trust in things.
Clocks, lifts, locks on doors, expiry dates,
passing trains, drivers on motorways.
We trust textbooks and milk and chair legs
and bread and skyscraper foundations.
We trust electricity, the moon, the teeth of strangers,
spoons, our low self esteem, dogs, the green man.
Every day I trust my skin will continue
to hold all of my bits in, stop the rain
knocking against my bones, get me out of bed,
remind me when to step out of the sun.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I carried a homemade cake across London
and got more stranger smiles than ever before.
It was like holding a happiness iced grenade,
a cream cheese party popper,
a puppy with a cherry for a nose.
I was a blueberry sponge postman
with the biggest delivery route in England,
a door-to-door salesman selling double-glazed pudding.
I was a man wandering through the corridor
of a conference centre wearing the name badge
Mr Sugar Crumbleton, Director of Cheer.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

When I take the bins out I imagine George Clooney
separating his card from his plastics.
I like picturing Dame Judi Dench fishing a seed
out of her back teeth with her tongue
or Samuel L. Jackson putting trainer socks on.
Do you reckon Victoria Beckham has ever
pressed 1 to speak to an operator?
I often think about Beyoncé popping a spot,
Anthony Hopkins sharpening a pencil,
Drew Barrymore changing a duvet cover
and you being here long enough
to pay your own council tax.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I’ve been thinking a lot about what super power
I’d go for. I’m leaning towards something like
the power to remember dietary requirements,
or doing backflips, or clicking my fingers
to make mint Viennetta’s appear from thin air,
or the power to not let little things make my skin
want to burst at the seams, or carpentry,
or the ability to cut my own hair, or remembering
which cloud types are which, or knitting,
or flying over my past and fixing relationship
errors that stiffen my joints at night,
or the power to go invisible exclusively
in those moments when you put your
hand out to shake someone else’s
but they don’t spot you.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

There’s a woman at work who sings in the day.
We’re not talking De dum, hum de dum,
Today it was BAAABY, IT’S GONNA BE OKAAAY!
as she washed up a fork.
It made me think of crockery and cutlery
I’ve misused over the years.
That knife I used as a screwdriver, the teaspoon
I tested my kneecap reflexes with,
the plate I smashed over my head to impress a friend,
the salad bowl I filled with a volcano
from gone off meat, that fork my drunk fingers
used to attack my self esteem through my skin
the night everything changed.
Baby, it’s gonna be okay.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I died last night.
It was a thwack from a bus.
The day before it was slipping off a cliff.
The day before that I choked on a fish bone.
I die most nights. Not in nightmares,
but in between the dancing luminous eye worms
from blinking too tightly at the end of a long day
or in the quicksand of supermarket decisions.
I sometimes die when I’m over the moon,
or when a stranger says more than Hello.
I’ve never made it to the end of my funeral.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

A woman vomited right in front of my feet
in a busy high street tonight.
A part of me agreed with her.
She smiled, had some of my water and left.
It’s been a while since I was sick,
but I enjoy the sensation.
The bursting of a net holding back too many butterflies,
the clearing of a loft, a lumpy scream,
a volcano drowning open ears,
a body admitting what it doesn’t like
and taking the steps to sort things out.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Finishing reading a good book is an odd feeling.
It’s like waving goodbye to university friends
at the end of your final year.
It’s like devouring a whole cheesecake
and waiting for the inevitable crash.
It’s plucking that chin hair then having
nothing to play with in boring work meetings.
It’s flushing that complicated poo and
walking back to your restaurant table and
not being able to discuss it with your blind date.
I put my completed book down on the coffee
table today in my empty flat and said
Well, what shall we do now? to a yucca plant.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I bought some white candy floss yesterday.
It looked and felt like a cloud, etc etc.
When my teeth chopped through it
a thousand invisible groundworkers
drilled
the enamel off my canines and molars.
The February rain was Dr Thomas’s spit
bursting through his mask.
The wind sliced through me
like the dental floss I never bought.

© Carl Burkitt 2020