My son’s forehead protrudes
like a crash helmet.
There’s not a blemish on it.
It’s soft like the padding
of a brand new goalie glove.
I imagine it growing freckles.
I imagine it growing into the shape
of an Arsenal Football Club canon.
I imagine it growing across the road
outside a midnight country pub.
Today your skin has been gone
longer than it was here
for us to really get to know it.
I imagine it growing.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
I’m not Harry Kane, no.
My back hurts. There’s a knot
in my hip tied up from all sorts.
I’d like to see Harry Kane
in this wrestling T-shirt and slippers though
lifting this sofa over a brick wall
wondering if this is what it takes
to make friends in your 30s.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
She got him back.
His pram was sitting neatly
in front of the display of chops.
Not to worry, the butcher said.
We knew you’d return.
And she did, her heart punching her chest,
sweat beads gathering like customer eyes
looking at livers and kidneys,
her calf muscles tender and panicked.
I feel my skin most days
looking for things I should be doing,
forgetting the things I believe,
wondering when it will fall off
my bones and drag my memory
to the floor.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Your hair is slicked back
and your cheeks could sell
a second hand car with ease.
People seem to smile
when your face walks
on to a drizzly forecourt.
Your singing voice is a punch
to the lungs.
I think about Janine
pushing you
off the edge of a cliff
and the shape of your laugh
disappearing.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
We don’t sell tea anymore
because people said they hated it.
I’d only ordered chips.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
The road has brand new tarmac,
Riz Ahmed is losing
his hearing in Sound of Metal,
Sainsbury’s stop selling
their veggie rainbow stew,
a baby learns
to bang his head on the floor,
an Italian restaurant closes down,
seven become five,
a goalkeeper stops
turning up.
Things just happen.
Like that.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
We didn’t follow the sign
but I assume it’s where
they get their feathers,
beaks and attitude from
and replacement parts
for their pneumatic necks
and steel for their eyes
and bread and chip tastebuds
and low flying swagger
and puffed out chest
that can’t hide
their overwhelming greyness.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Perhaps
they’re over compensating
for their lack of death.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
One has a fistful of dog turd.
One has a book under their arm
as thick as a Ploughman’s sandwich
from a village pub called something
like The Owl & Ratchet.
One is eating a Calippo like they’re on death row.
One is asking her child to
stop leaning on the glass, stop leaning
on the glass, stop leaning on the glass.
One is up a tree and on the clouds
and in eyes and around the corner.
One is waiting.
© Carl Burkitt 2021
Carl tells tales 