I spent last night on a slowly deflating air bed.
I was a broken plank in the ocean,
a fly in a slowly stirred soup,
the last bag on an airport conveyor belt.
My dreams were my awakes.
I felt like a slow motion action star
from the 70s falling from a cliff,
Tom Daley diving through custard,
the last seed to be found in a receding gum,
a helium balloon destined for the sun.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I’m stood between two men. The shoulders of
the guy to my left are almost wider than a door,
the man on my right has a chair-sized head.
The conversational jigsaw pieces they’re throwing
around the lift build the picture that they’re
colleagues on their way to a 4th floor meeting.
I forgot my laptop! Shoulders says.
Christ, me too! Head says. Dan’s gonna kill us.
The nervous silence is unbearable.
Just knock him out, I try, chuckling.
No way, Head says. You should see the size of him.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I just drank a cup of water
that tasted like onions.
Half a pint of dinner-prep tears.
If onions could cry, would you cut them?
I once cried peeling potatoes.
It was a Monday,
the living room was full,
I just wanted to be useful.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I got egg on me was a sentence I said today
to a man in the top tax bracket.
I wonder how many eggs he’s bought in his life.
I bet his past is an eggshell massacre,
his wheelie bin a Red Lion graveyard,
his kitchen a haunted house of yolk ghosts.
I bet the man has had more eggs than oxygen,
he just doesn’t wear them on his clothes.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I spent the day with a serious man.
He was all elbows and straight lines.
Ironed shirt. Pressed suit. Creaseless skin.
Late afternoon he finally sat down, his trousers
riding up to reveal devil red socks. They looked like
Christmas stockings stuffed with disappointment,
strawberry laces wrapped around a bread stick,
a clown dressed as the Grim Reaper.
They were a chocolate chip in a digestive biscuit,
a bar brawl in a nunnery, a firework at a funeral.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Out of the infinite yous
living across infinite parallel universes,
which one would you like to hang out with?
The you with the head of a fox and arse of a duck?
The you with forks for teeth and patio slab feet?
What about the inside out you? The one inch you?
The you with fire for skin and chainsaw fingers?
What about the you with your partner’s face?
I’d hang out with the me who likes coconut
and find out how he peels tangerines.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

There’s a man who eases congestion on my morning train platform by pulling across one of those stretchy barriers when a train is about to leave, stopping the late coming rushers from charging at it. We smile at each other every day. I don’t know his name. I see some of my closest friends only once a year. I have second cousins I wouldn’t recognise in the street. I overheard a man reintroduce himself to someone yesterday. Adam, he said. Adam Jones. The last time we saw each other, my mother was alive.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

There was a time I didn’t know
how to fry an egg.
At one point I couldn’t walk,
now I run for buses I know I’ll never catch.
I couldn’t say ‘Mum’ for ages
and now I forget to call.
My fingers remember my PIN number
when my brain can’t.
My body feels like the roots of a tree:
stretching chaos below the surface,
miraculously keeping me pointed up.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Morning Geoff, keeping warm? the security guard said. Inside and out, Geoff replied, with the charm of the silver hair tufts poking out the side of the conker brown flap cap sitting on his head. Geoff’s ‘volunteer’ lanyard hung around his neck like a gold medal. His eyes were a log cabin’s fireplace. He had the shoulders of a man carrying the world but a skip in his toes making it look like a feather.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I sometimes feel like I’m a teabag
in a cup of hot water.
If you let me sit for a while
you’ll see the best me.
Leave me too long, I go a bit cold.
I can’t quite fit inside a microwave,
but two warm hands often do the trick.

© Carl Burkitt 2020