There’s a tree outside my bedroom
with popcorn-like blossom. It’s the tastiest
looking nature.
When I stand at the window I feel like a movie star
staring out at a cinema full of snacks:
salt sprinkled branches, sugar coated leaves.
If popcorn grew on trees I’d getting nothing done.
I’d spend more time outside, climb up trunks,
watch the world do it’s thing snuggled up in an oak
nibbling on a large box of sap.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

The sign read
Please don’t fly kites near the skylarks.
They were our stringless entertainment for the day.
I hope I’m remembered as a groundlark,
someone who gave it a good go,
played when he could,
looped and dipped when he was bored.
I’m probably more of an urban slug;
slow off the mark,
vulnerable to being walked all over,
a trail of sparkling tears behind me.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

I feel at home inside a bag of chips.
A hundred spud fingers holding me with their salty prints,
the walls so greasy you can see through them
like my skin when I’m nervous.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Every day this week a man about my age
has walked past my window wearing plum jogging bottoms
and a matching plum hoodie, empty handed.
On his return journey he always has a newspaper
under his right arm, an orange Lucozade under his left
and he nibbles on a packet of Doritos Chilli Heatwave.
I wonder what he does at home all day.
Maybe he potters about tidying up the garden,
practices drawing with fine liners, collects stamps,
fiddles with frayed bits of the carpet with his big toe,
looks at photos of dead loved ones.
Maybe he sits on the sofa counting down the seconds
until he gets his paper, orange Lucozade
and packet of Doritos Chilli Heatwave.

© Carl Burkitt 2020