All of their mouths are smiling:
the lion, the giraffe, the monkey, the zebra.
Their wooden bodies are painted
in primary colours not matching their faces
stood upright in a hand-shaped boat.
They’re not in the correct places.
They don’t say anything to each other,
they just allow themselves to be taken
and put back and taken and put back
while the hand learns patience.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

Our faces are plasticine
stuck to the top of a desk;
fingerprints for cheekbones,
amateur artist impressions
of hair and open mouths.
We look over ourselves,
melting into dust and photographs
for a box in a loft of a future house
owned by a cut and shut of our skulls.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

The pedal bin creaks
like it’s had no one
to talk to all day;
its dry throat coughs
on tissue and banana
skin. What’s the plan?
it tries. How’ve you been?

© Carl Burkitt 2021

Flames from the past
crackle on the screen
to make you feel at home.
There is no way it warms you up,
but it does. The orange waves
tap into the part of you
that still wants to live in a cave
and talk about wild berries
and meat on the bone.
The logs died God knows when
but I get to watch it over and over
and imagine you holding
a marshmallow over them, cracking
that smile I tell everyone about
when I’ve had a couple of beers.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

The words land like piss
on a blue urinal cake.
The man’s smile
is bathroom tile violence.
The need to fight melts away
when your bones have reached
full capacity and my skin slips into
corridor silence. He has nowhere
to put the urge to damage
so uses a finger on the hand
that isn’t directing his stream
to point at a blue bobble
that was a gift in June.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

The phone box was full.
There must have been anywhere
between 600 and 80,000 bodies
crammed together in there.
Limbs wrapped around each other like
a landline cable around a nervous finger.
Everyone had someone to call
but nothing to say.
That didn’t stop them fighting
for the chance to stand
in a comfortable silence.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

His name badge font is harsher.
His slender, colourful suits have lost their pattern.
His moustache remains in the shape of a smile
though and he is filled with flavour and
disappointment.

© Carl Burkitt 2021

The sun is not ready yet.
They hold coffees
bigger than their hands
with names I’ll never know.
Their unbranded gillets
look tiny from up here.
The group of four are laughing
at an in-joke I imagine.
I bet the heels
of their brown or black loafers
sound like nattering
on the iced tarmac.
I turn the kitchen tap on
like a water cooler.

© Carl Burkitt 2021