She’s telling him he is an inspiration
to her. She says she runs for the bus occasionally
if she dawdles buckling up her sandals,
so she can’t imagine doing a 10k – not at her age,
and he’s bloody nine years older than her!
He changes the subject to grandchildren
and then to the coffee they’re drinking
and they agree it’s delicious and how
they would like to do it again sometime.
She repeats how inspired she is by him,
how he makes her want
to step out of the house again. He fiddles
with his wooden stirrer and asks if she
would like to try one of those
funny looking muffins. She would.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The barista is complimenting the man’s
reusable cup. She explains how she enjoys
the contrast of the baby blue background
with the Easter-yellow bumble bees
swooping gently on soft-edged sunflowers.
I know it’s a bit girly, he says
through grey stubble on wrinkled skin.
It represents my football team, The Bees.
She secures the lid and says, They sound cool.
They’re fucking wicked, he replies. 

© Carl Burkitt 2023

In the middle of a film
with a moderate innuendo warning
highlighting the strength of women
and their potential to be more
than sexual fodder for the patriarchy,
the actors slipped it in.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Just the way he’d like it,
I imagine his mates from the pub
saying as they crack open cans of golden cider
in the rain. Kathy Burke asks celebrities
in my ears how they want to be remembered;
if they’d like a gravestone or a monument,
something for people to flock to and think
about the wonderful and
terrible things you did when you had blood.
It can be difficult wanting people
around when you are alive.
I don’t want much when I’m dead:
maybe a thought the length of a pint
or somewhere birds feel comfortable.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

This dude lives
in a world you cannot cook baked beans
and serve them with custard
or marinate sausages in cherry cola
or scramble eggs with sugar and SPAM.
You can’t mess up a full English,
he says, eating toast as dry as his imagination.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

He’s teaching his mates in the pub
how to use an air fryer.
He reckons frozen fish fingers
Can be Done in eight minutes
and cheese toasties are less greasy.
There’s an Instagram account
dedicated to battered bacon
and pizza stuffed air-fried English muffins.
He misses his wife
and how liberally she buttered
crumpets on a Sunday.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

You wave
in the morning
removing the stubborn
aches in lost bones and the deep rum
punch stains.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The bloke and his auntie are not eating
the gherkins next to their burgers and
I have never felt more lonely. Two mums
are discussing how their children have cried
every morning for two years going to nursery.
The owner of this eatery is brushing his teeth
behind the bar with his arm around his wife.
I can see two runners out the window
wearing denim shorts. Two blokes refused milk
and asked for five sugars in their tea.
The pair of gherkins are doing what they can
to convince me it wouldn’t be weird
if I just leant over and asked if I could eat them.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

He’s doing some kind of maths work in the pub
wearing a black and yellow Spice Girls T-shirt
looking like the coolest guy in the world.
Maybe it’s the set square jawline,
the smile wider than an Excel spreadsheet,
or the way he just ran out the door
and down the road quicker than Mel C
to hand an old lady the woolly hat
she accidentally left on her booth chair
before leaving. When he returned
with the hat on his head declaring
it was not actually hers, I would have
kissed his calculator-hard pecs
if he’d asked me to.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

They call time a race.
Frank does what he can to dance,
charge through days like a great Dane.
Hours lean
in to watch my lad
say yes to a dare,
choose Velcro over a shoelace.
There is no time to clean
the path in front of him. I ran
slowly, pretending I was real,
looking for a time-bending clan.

© Carl Burkitt 2023