The leaves on that tree are all red
like a load of blood blisters
or something more cheery
like a slap mark on an outstretched thigh
in an October Saturday football match
you’re desperate
to do anything to stand out.

Carl Burkitt 2025

I tried writing a kids’ poem about a seal drinking a hot chocolate in my local Costa Coffee but the seal started crying. At first, he didn’t know why he was crying, but his friend said, ‘It’s no surprise, you’ve not been happy since the day she left’ and the seal howled. He slapped his flippers together and said he couldn’t put on a show for people anymore. I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard a seal admit to how the pressures of life get to them, but it made me regret every pound I’ve ever given to a zoo.

Carl Burkitt 2025

The lifeguard is off duty, so my mind sinks. I am not a shark. There’s a verruca plaster in the deep end talking to me. “Do you remember how you got an A in GCSE PE for life-saving but failed swimming?” There’s a dolphin in the slow lane enjoying her fake freedom. I wonder if Millsy still swims. He had to wait until the rest of us had reached a quarter of the way down the pool at Galas before diving in and winning. There’s a piranha in the fast lane. He bit me in the changing room last week when my psoriasis shampoo fell out of my bag. My spine is sea weed. I don’t wear goggles because I don’t want to see my legs kicking for no reason. I heard once that the trauma of nearly drowning can cause a stammer. I wonder if that’s true when pulled under by social situations. Oh, the lifeguard’s back. I am a shark.

Carl Burkitt 2025

The day wrote itself a poem.
It described waking up for the trillionth time,
being greeted by the sun with the warmth
of a colleague who knows you had a rough night.
It remembered hearing about mindfulness
from a poster on a train station platform,
so the day spent the morning listening
to pigeons pecking at dead croissants,
loafers pretending they were ice skates
sliding towards their office jobs imagining
Torvill and Dean were applauding their moves.
The day didn’t beat itself up for its fast food lunch
or the way it snapped at its sun
because it ultimately ate salad for dinner
and apologised for the past repeating itself
on a ball of shining light that just wants to know
it is doing the right thing.

Carl Burkitt 2025

Mozzarella is oozing from the bottom of the freshly cooked pesto panini and is about to hit the woman’s wrist any second now but she’s too busy flirting with her husband to notice and I would be a weirdo for walking across Handforth Dean Costa to warn her – let alone dramatically pointing in her direction – so I let her ever-so-slightly burn herself and watch her tell off her husband for not letting her know mozzarella was oozing from the bottom of the freshly cooked pesto panini and I silently wish for their son to have the confidence to speak up and do the right thing when he grows up.

Carl Burkitt 2025

I think I’ve run out of ideas
so I pick up a pen
and point it at the moon
that shrugs like an elephant
at all the shite it’s been described as
over the centuries.

Carl Burkitt 2025

You can see it in the pretty clothes he picks
for his daughter, the £450
vet bill for his original fur baby.
His head is a crystal door handle
decorating walls like a disco ball
when the light of a stranger’s interests hits him.
He splices open bags of crisps in pubs –
smoked meat options for the meat eaters,
cheese and onion just in case there are
secret vegetarians among us –
and his mind dances to familiar fingers
nipping in and out like Hungry Hippos.
He knows his way around an expense receipt,
pours out compliments like free gravy.
A bag of peanuts is a reminder that
conversations are poems about death
and 1990’s Arsenal footballers
and obsessions that can become dangerous
if not shared over a stained oak table.
His chest is a megaphone that screams,
‘Just rhyme the last two lines as the reader leaves.’

Carl Burkitt 2025

1. Completing tasks is impossible.

Carl Burkitt 2025

It’s the 10th anniversary of her husband’s death
so her boyfriend is buying her cheesy chips
in the kebab house. She loves him.
And today was a tough morning for her
21-year-old daughter in the nice cafe
holding space over poached eggs.
The boyfriend asks for extra burger sauce
and listens to his girlfriend explain to the staff
how the day was just as hard for him.
He holds her hand and orders onion rings.
“Isn’t he great?” she cries.

Carl Burkitt 2025

After Erin Bolens

The man next to me is asleep.
His head is so tightly against the window
the clouds are ginger curtains.

Carl Burkitt 2025