I was once asked
how do you know you have a forehead?
It made sense at the time.
Context is a powerful thing.
A grown man once asked me
can moons get married?
It wasn’t a grown man, it was a toddler,
but if all things go well he will one day
be a grown man who once asked me
can moons get married?
I often daydream about him saying that
when a job interviewer says
do you have any questions for us?

© Carl Burkitt 2020

How do curly hairs know how to be curly?
Do they have roots like Turkey Twizzlers?
Is the bit between my skull and head skin
a farm of pigs in a row sticking their bums to the sky?
My eyebrows don’t curl.
My armpit hairs are as straight
as a punk rocker’s Mohawk
when I reach to the curly nest on my head.
Sometimes I sit and wonder
what kind of bird would live in my hair.
I wonder if they’d want to fly away
before they’d even learned to walk.

© Carl Burkitt 2020

The skin of a pear is hell to me.
It’s nails down a chalkboard,
a sandpaper condom.
It’s eating a nail file
with a tongue made of fingertips.
It’s small talk in a lift.
It’s pacificlly.
It’s an unscheduled family phone call at work.
It’s spring 2004 and all I want to do
is stay in Swindon and get a taxi
home with you.

© Carl Burkitt 2020