Her tongue is a beak, pecking at the crumbs of the mistakes she sees. Arrive late. Peck. Forgot my book. Peck. Poor grammar. Peck. Untucked shirt. Peck. Looking the wrong way. Peck. The skin of my torso tightens, ribs forget the are there to protect me. Peck. Talking too much. Peck. I didn’t say anything. Peck. Get out and stay out.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
There’s a picture of you holding me in your arms. I can’t be bigger than one of your RAF boots, the ones as polished as your Brylcreemed head. It’s nice knowing the baby ears in that photo heard your voice. Perhaps it talked to them about Yorkshire puddings or where made the best beer: Malta, Singapore, or Beverley. Perhaps they told me to stop crying or whispered Everything will be OK.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
There’s a post-box outside my block of flats with two letter holes. It’s the double-width kind like the one you leap frogged with no hands outside my Uni accommodation. You flew over it so easily, the drunk man who bet you couldn’t gave me 20 quid and said, He’s the coolest guy I’ve ever met. Do you remember hiding in the loo at that house party to sellotape our feet to our faces when those women wanted to kiss us?
© Carl Burkitt 2022
Driving past the turnoff to your cul-de-sac, I can still feel the box of Roses in my sweaty, eight-year-old hands. The chocolates cost me about one million pounds. How many cars must I have washed? I sat in my room for 50 years after sprinting from your front door thinking of you nibbling a Golden Barrel like a squirrel, waiting for Sunday to end. It’s Monday, and I hear you say my name from behind a tree in the playground telling your friends you Prefer Quality Street. You. Said. My. Name.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
He’s perched on a car seat with a finger up his nose, the crumbs of fallen Pom Bear arms and legs are dotted around him like chips across a Scottish beach. Snot sits on cheeks built by experts. He sees a green tractor and demands a yellow tractor, a red tractor, a blue tractor, a yellow tractor, a red tractor, a blue tractor. The letters for Please forget how to form an orderly queue. His eyes fill the rear-view mirror, the source of the River Tay: gentle, powerful.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
He’s standing in my doorway, a red polo neck
peeking out of a blue Puma jumper. His black
jeans fit nicely and his running shoes look well
worked. We’ve been talking for two minutes.
He owns Flat 7 and is sorting out a few bits
before the new tenant moves in, and he heads back
to Sidney to be with his boys. He lived here
for 50 years but there’s no family left and when
he gets ill he can’t expect to rely on friends
to do the difficult bits. I’m Tony, by the way, he says.
I’m Carl, I reply, without hugging him
or explaining how my middle name is Antony.
He asks if I’ve got terrestrial or Virgin Media.
He asks if he can see my grill
because he seems to have lost his.
He compliments my son’s basket of cars
and trips on the kitchen’s baby gate.
Hopefully we’ll meet again, he says,
sprinting off to ASDA.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
My head is surrounded
by the familiar twang of Alright?
as I walk through shipwrecks of kisses
with confused tongues, step off
planks into awkward conversations,
pretend to enjoy rum at house parties.
I am a pirate again
with a parrot on my shoulder
doing all of the talking for me,
making me appear in charge.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
There is not a BMX or pair of Vans
in this barn. He is not wearing Kurt Cobain jeans
and his top button is done up. I just saw him
tuck his shirt in. A guy I know who once ate pizza
in his pants in my living room is Tweeting
about a few-day residential he’s just been on
with his primary school. He’s drinking ale
because he is old enough to be a teacher.
Brimful of Asha just came on
and I’m wondering if I’m going to be wedgied.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
Squirrels do not understand
the word nut
but they wake up every morning
to find one.
You are standing
outside of a Papa John’s Pizza place
in the middle of the day
telling me you want some steps
to reach the moon.
I have a heavy carrier bag
and say we need to go home,
the apples of my imaginition
dropping one by one
to the floor.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
The man with the same length hair
on his head as the hair on his chin
is sitting in the café with an unopened pot
of Kenco coffee on the table in front of him.
A back up plan? A threat? Who knows?
His colleague is at the counter
ordering two skinny lattes from his balmed lips.
The man with the same length hair
on his head as the hair on his chin
is looking out of the window.
Bored? Excited? Who knows?
His feet are tapping along to Kelly Clarkson.
© Carl Burkitt 2022
Carl tells tales 