If every day was sports day
I’d back myself in the egg and spoon race.
Or some sort of hula hoop challenge,
if the hula hoops were the Beef flavoured kind.
I’d fancy myself in the hop, skip
and jump-to-conclusions
then curl up in a sack
like a knackered potato.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

From time
to time to time
I spend my time
as a pair of hands
on a clock that’s
slowly running
out of batteries.
A tired bird,
cuckooless.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

A bomb of teeth and arm hair
exploded in our kitchen.
A smiling lion with a lanyard
teased out our tortoise heads.
Torn jeans and a scuffed collared t-shirt
from the wardrobe of a distant universe
took its first steps in our atmosphere.
A whistling Harrison Ford
burst through our tomb
and dusted off our fossilised
social bones with Hello.
A gas engineer
inspected our boiler today.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

When I was little
I wanted to be a Chippendale.
I used to take my pants off
in the living room
to a Status Quo VHS.
I never got paid –
side hustles
hadn’t been invented yet.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

My living room floorboards moan
when I stand on them.
So I stay on the sofa
and let the cushions smile
around my arse cheeks.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

If reincarnation is real
I want to come back
as a large portion
of chip shop chips
and be delivered to
a person who struggles
to finish me off
but refuses to admit
a regular portion
would’ve been enough.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Imagine a blue whale crying. Like, really crying.
Sobbing, shaking, snot sinking to the ocean floor,
its fins flailing like heartbroken prey between teeth,
its tail slapping waves to the other side of the world.
Imagine the noise. The screams. The salt levels rising.
Imagine a blue whale crying. Like, really crying.
The way you did that time
when you thought we were all in bed.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I see myself
in the scum of an over-brewed cup of tea,
the correct answer in a pub quiz
crossed out and replaced with a second thought.
There’s a phone charger
at the back of my broken chest of drawers
that’s frayed in three separate places.
It still works, if you position it right.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I once heard that the roots of a tree
grow as tall as the tree itself.
I often think about that
when combing my beard at night.
I imagine the inside of my skull
to be stuffed with moustache and sideburns.
If I stood still long enough outside
would a 6 foot 4 me grow underground?
I wonder if he has bad knees,
wishes he likes the taste of coconut
and loses track of his thoughts.

© Carl Burkitt 2020