I’ll put some raisins in my mayo
and spend the day thinking up
cheaper ways to live.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

and yet he will never
be called a genius.
He can fold Doritos packets
into miniature triangles,
tighter than the minds
of the people who refuse
to open up to the fact
he can turn awkward situations
into a completely different shape.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

because there are daffodils
in every park for it to eat.
Life is slow. The mountains
stand like shells over a city
of retired hares.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

I wonder just how long
the man’s friend by the shore was
and when I feel comfortable
to stop hiding behind jokes
I smell salt in the air
and feel my beard growing where it needs to.
There’s sand in the cuts on my fingers
and my arms feel big enough to carry cargo
or slap the back of a man who needs it.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

According to his T-Shirt
he is part of The Optimist Club.
He’s not talking to his friend
outside the coffee shop,
he’s looking down the road
holding bear spray.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

She says no
but the river continues
to laugh at how powerful it is.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

Cheer up, it may never happen,
were the last words he heard.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

You’re working in the living room on something
important. I’m thinking about teapots,
words that rhyme with fish, how the man
who told me what aisle the pecans were
in the supermarket will die one day.
There’s a bloke in the café with a perfectly smooth
forehead. I imagine you ironing the creases
out with the weight of your listening. My phone
sings a little song to tell me about a celebrity’s
suicide and you’re still in the living toom
working on something important.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The lads are in the park with their tops off.
They’re talking about Lionel Messi
struggling to kick their red ball to each other.
They don’t care, it’s just good to be outside
and let their belly buttons feel the fresh air.
I’m doing laps of the circular patch of green
listening to my phone telling me
about the health of a man I love, desperate
for the red ball to accidentally fly my way,
desperate to connect with it.

© Carl Burkitt 2023

The novel I’m reading involves a man
desperate to become a better person.
He believes all his pointless little lies will,
if not bite him in this life, make his existence
in the next realm an unsavoury one.
He decides to stop saying It’s fine when
people accidentally step on his toes,
or No worries when his friends are late
to meet up or I’m good when he feels
like his skin is not his. It made me think,
which is odd, because I’m not reading a novel.

© Carl Burkitt 2023