I put my naked feet on cold bathroom tiles
and told my toes they were patio slabs in shade.
I stood two inches from my bedside lamp wearing
loose grey shorts and a blue baseball cap.
The splinters and nails sticking up from the
living room floorboards were unwelcome weeds.
My bookshelves were unbending fences
draped in a million leafed pages of hard-spined
climbing plants. The toilet was a dirty pond,
the fireplace a BBQ, the drooping sofa a hammock.
When night came, the broken kitchen bulb
was the moon surrounded by LED spotlight stars.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I’m looking at my flat a lot more lately.
Really looking at it. Beyond the floorboards, beyond the coffee table,
beyond the books, beyond the bookshelves,
beyond the paint, beyond the bricks, beyond the mustard candy floss insulation,
beyond the inevitable mice, beyond the other bricks,
beyond the plum-coloured tree unsure
whether it’s trying to die or regrow,
beyond the road and the bus stop
and the shops and the concrete hill,
beyond the birds, clouds, the sky I can’t remember,
beyond space and stars and black holes
and questions and answers and sleep and awake
and blood and bones and what?
I can’t stop looking at my flat.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

If someone stacked up the number of individual
Pringles I’ve ever eaten I hope I’d be proud.
One weekend when we were alone
my brother and I spread butter on our toast
using fingers instead of knives.
Sixteen years ago I Sellotaped my right foot
to my face cheek trying to earn a kiss
from a human woman. I once spent a whole week
learning the lyrics to Mundian To Bach Ke.
On a furiously sunny morning or afternoon
one November or August or March
I sat in a park or stood in a park and
made noises with my mouth for the first time.
Last week I ate a wedge of Brie like a Snickers.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Tonight I had a look in the fridge
for something to do. When I shut the door
a part of my brain decided to leave my thumb
inside, trap it and peel off a chunk of its skin.
During after-school football training in 1999,
a friend of mine asked me to stick
my arm out to show me a magic trick.
When I stuck it out, he cut my forearm
with the blade from a pencil sharpener.
After 30 minutes of stopping the bleeding
and sticking my sliced skin back together,
I asked why he did it. I can’t remember exactly
what he said, but it was along the lines of
Something to do.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

There’s a man in my knife and fork drawer.
He sits in my palm during dinner.
I need to run through rain in his skin again.
The skip in my record player is a tut
to me slagging off Shirley Bassey.
At night I like to imagine
an eccentric old Oxfam customer
settling down with a hot water bottle, her legs
dressed up in his God-awful
grey camouflage pyjama bottoms.
I wish his warm winter hat fit my head.
I keep fruit in his sausage casserole dish.

© Carl Burkitt 2020