I saw an old couple, arm in arm,
walking into the wind.
I wondered if they hold each other up
in the sunshine too. When things appear bright
but behind the scenes is a storm
waiting to shake your life bones
and sweep you off your feet in an unromantic way.
They looked like they probably do.
The majority of their wrinkles
were around the part of the mouth that goes up.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I regularly contemplate
what bits of me will fall off first.
Head hair is an obvious one.
Good money is on the molars.
But what if it’s my nose, or eyes?
Some days I wake up and feel like
the entirety of my skin has slipped off,
taking with it everything I’ve ever touched.
I once went to work with no face, no nerves.
My blood stayed at home on my pillow,
hoping I’d return.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Listening to people talk about something
they’re passionate about is magical.
It’s a ski-slope into a new world.
It can transform a colleague
into a master calligrapher,
a toddler into a T-Rex,
a marketeer into the Intercontinental Champion,
a sibling into an astronaut.
I wish, for one second, I could feel
what you feel when you eat chocolate.
I’d change my name to Charlie Bucket.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

He got some professional hope
is the best typo I’ve ever seen.
I imagine it to be a baker
confidently baking only 12 rolls.
I once heard someone say they were
an optimist but rarely told anyone
out loud in case it jinxed it.
I get hope from small things like
spotting takeaway drivers on Monday nights,
toddlers standing after every tumble,
out of tune adult choirs,
or remembering the supply teacher
who always wrote the date on the board
10 years in the past and how no one
corrected her to save her embarrassment.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

My skin gets up to all sorts when I’m not looking.
It holds my bits in, stops my bones drowning.
I wake up with scratches from nightmares.
You trim the wispy hairs off the back of my neck.
My wispies. You pop my insecurities
like the black heads on my chest.
When my beard hairs don’t want to face the world
and grow back to the other side of my skin
only your fingers (and tweezers)
know what to do.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

A conversation can change the world.
A listening ear opens the universe.
Do you like tea, sir? My barber asked.
Do you like biscuits, sir? Buy biscuit tea.
No need to ever chew a biscuit again.
Does your wife like peaches, raspberries,
things like that? Milkshake Shampoo, sir,
it has all the smells. I once had a client,
sir, who told me he fucked his niece
from his wife’s side. He expected me to say
‘Get in there son!’ I told him to leave
and sort his family out. I’d only shaved
half his head.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I have a crack in the end of my shoe.
It’s not quite talking yet, but when it does
I wonder what it will have to say.
It’s seen quite a lot. Today alone
it walked past a dog kissing a dog’s bum,
two cars honking like posturing birds,
the crumbs of a biscuit spread out
wider than a biscuit, a puddle
when there was no rain in the sky and a
young man talking to himself in a way that
if it was Wednesday he’d be prepping for an interview,
but it was Friday so perhaps it was a date.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

A headache occurs in the nerves,
muscles and blood vessels
surrounding the head.
It is not something happening to the brain.
The brain itself cannot feel pain.
I try to remember that
when I can’t get out of bed.
In those moments when open fields
feel like overcrowded workplace lifts
I tell myself My brain cannot feel pain.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I have many feet for many different occasions.
My everyday Dunlop trainers are size 10.5.
My soon-to-retire football boots are 11.5.
The brown, pointy shoes with ready-for-this laces
I wore at my wedding are 11.
My 33rd birthday slippers are 12, like Dad’s.
I have many faces for many different occasions,
like Dad.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

There are three people sat on the train seats
opposite me. They’re all wearing hats.
One’s red, one’s orange, one’s green.
Their hats, I mean. I wish I could tell you
the colours matched the expression
their faces have. But they aren’t. The person
in the red hat looks incredibly open,
the person in the green hat looks
rather indifferent and the person in the
orange had looks closed off. When I’m smiling
through the room at a house party
discussing the weather and asking
how work is I’m often looking
for the nearest clock.

© Carl Burkitt 2020