Football Poets

Oh what a claret and blue relief

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Oh what a claret and blue relief
You can almost see the puffed cheeks
West Ham safe from relegation
But quite the most horrendous ordeal
We can see quite clearly
From afar but long enough
To appreciate human emotion
In all of its contrasting moods
Cowering behind sofas
It could only be surely
Be the happy Hammers
Agonisingly unbearable, typical
This could only be West Ham
The wince, those twisted facial
Grimaces of Chinese water torture
Pain, anguished knots of barely
Concealed frustration
Lined faces
Permanently worried
All of those wasted responses
In win or lose settings
On trains going home from
The good natured wars
Of Saturday afternoon long
Ago, etched in our thoughts
Why, but who cares now where
Fear and constant nine
Month wear and tear hangs heavy
Over once thriving clatter
Of East End dockyards
But now we think of today
Now disappointment
Then ecstasy floods across
Their furrowed foreheads
Heads lost in a world of
What might have been
It could all have been so different
But today West Ham hit the mythical
40 points of order
On the penultimate game of the season
Home from home victories
At the London Stadium
Sanctuaries of domestic content
Against a side Don Revie
Once described as the best
In the country
The Leeds of Bremner, Giles,
Lorimer, Jones, Clarke, Sprake
At times unstoppable for the
Right reasons
But then attacked by those
Who satirised their best intentions
The cruel mockery of the Saints
When Leeds gourmandised
On seven of the best against
The Southampton skittles
Sent toppling into oblivion
Sadly though for the Elland Road
Grandstanders, now bowed by history
Today Leeds stand on the brink again
The aching void, the perilous precipice
Staring down balefully
At the relegation trapdoor
When they must have thought
The top flight of football’s
High flyers
Would embrace them like long
Lost uncles
Who just wanted to see hello to
Football’s global family
Glad to see you again, we
Were of course delighted
At this reunion
Today Leeds surrendered to
East Enders in no mood
To sympathise with today’s
Back page notables
3-1 to West Ham
Rice, Bowen and Lanzini
Seal the deal
The Foxes await in their
Dark, nocturnal hideaway
West Ham determined
To be crowned at the King Power
Stadium of all stadiums
Leicester also caught up in
The cross hairs of their own
Doom and gloom
But for West Ham it’s safety
From the dreaded drop
Romford, Newham, Forest Gate,
Ilford, Dagenham, Gidea Park and Romford
Suburbia in saturnalia
Let Bacchus drink endlessly
From the finest East End
Grapes of wanton wine
Celebrate with the best
Never rest until
The ultimate test in Prague

25