Out of the infinite yous
living across infinite parallel universes,
which one would you like to hang out with?
The you with the head of a fox and arse of a duck?
The you with forks for teeth and patio slab feet?
What about the inside out you? The one inch you?
The you with fire for skin and chainsaw fingers?
What about the you with your partner’s face?
I’d hang out with the me who likes coconut
and find out how he peels tangerines.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

There’s a man who eases congestion on my morning train platform by pulling across one of those stretchy barriers when a train is about to leave, stopping the late coming rushers from charging at it. We smile at each other every day. I don’t know his name. I see some of my closest friends only once a year. I have second cousins I wouldn’t recognise in the street. I overheard a man reintroduce himself to someone yesterday. Adam, he said. Adam Jones. The last time we saw each other, my mother was alive.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

There was a time I didn’t know
how to fry an egg.
At one point I couldn’t walk,
now I run for buses I know I’ll never catch.
I couldn’t say ‘Mum’ for ages
and now I forget to call.
My fingers remember my PIN number
when my brain can’t.
My body feels like the roots of a tree:
stretching chaos below the surface,
miraculously keeping me pointed up.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

Morning Geoff, keeping warm? the security guard said. Inside and out, Geoff replied, with the charm of the silver hair tufts poking out the side of the conker brown flap cap sitting on his head. Geoff’s ‘volunteer’ lanyard hung around his neck like a gold medal. His eyes were a log cabin’s fireplace. He had the shoulders of a man carrying the world but a skip in his toes making it look like a feather.

© Carl Burkitt 2020