Today I dipped a round slice of cucumber
into a spoonful of French mustard.
While moving it from plate to mouth
the mustard flicked into my open eye.
We all laughed at the table because
it was the 90s and we were children
and my pain was sudden and hilarious.
There will be a lad on the school bus
in a few years who will drop his lunch
on the floor and we will all laugh
because his pain will be sudden
and hilarious. I will get a phone call
one afternoon and the sky will look
like the night. Sudden.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

You never know what you will do
when teenage motorbike thieves
swing a crowbar at you. I will step
into the pub, watch the owner climb
off the floor, hear the 2.50pm train pull
into the station, smell
the reduced strawberries from the green
grocers, feel the kerb become
my ankle, taste a community charge
the streets, feel the two wheels buckle
under the weight of desperate boys.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

When I’ve got no-one to talk to
I chat to my missus about football
and her eyes are a plastic ball
forced to play keep-ups on a pebbled beach
on a rare family holiday. She smiles
at how I pronounce the European names
and we don’t have the same opinions
on the away kit design.
She lifts a glass of red wine to her lips
like a whistle at the end of the game
and before I can apologise
she tells me she’s made up a song
for our reserve team goalkeeper.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The mirror is actually a hatch
leading into a pub’s kitchen.
The chef with a beard is not
calling himself useless
or wondering why anyone
around him are even there.
He’s holding a knife
with gentle fingers that take
their time over ingredients
he feels lucky to have.
He doesn’t hate the carrot,
he wants the carrot to be
at its very best.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

He’s inside the laptop screen in a café,
for a meeting about the quarterly figures,
unaware his colleague cannot find her headphones.

© Carl Burkitt 2023