Football Poets

Wembley you’ve been livin’ hell to me
with your Hanger Lane gyratory
traffic for no reason, regardless of the season,
and the IKEA cafe’s run out of lingonberry.

Wembley, I hate every inch of you.
Your […]

You hear it at every 5-a-side:
the myth of the man with time.
He’s rarely there, but you hear his name.
‘Paul – he must be 60 now – dictates the game.’

He’s reached the point where he rarely runs,
but […]

I knew it would happen; we missed the window.
Our boat didn’t come in and nor did we swim to it.

Our chairman had a month at Cowes Week.
The vice-president got trapped in industrial brioche,
was stuck in […]

The day I found out I was leaving,
no-one told me. It was on Ceefax, page 302:
I’m off to Bristol City!

Maybe it’s time to ride the Severn Bore
to Gloucester from Sharpness
in tomorrow’s dusk and […]

Then I realised there is no central being,
no person in a back room with an Akashic list
or metaphysical clipboard in Hammersmith.
Ultimately, ‘Fulham’ does not exist.

No single person can validate your […]

How did you get me twice? Back on the field
I thought I had escaped your clutches, comments,
your dismissive shaking of the head.

The frustrated Biology teacher helping with games,
telling us we were useless […]

All angles of approach were wrong;
James said ‘One of these days, you’ll play on the floor’,
but I was in the far corner: it was two on one.
All angles of approach were wrong.

The midfield was cross I was […]

The arboretum’s real;
I told you at the time.
We never get the people through
the checkpoints and the river police;
I told you at the time.

The inland lakes are real;
I told you at the time.
A garden by […]

If I can’t find words
or if they are halted by a synaptic lock keeper,
tyrannical yet wise, holding up a hand
to delay the latest craft, whatever its design,
I return to a trusted question,
my favourite f […]

Once we played on a cinder pitch,
a lava flow field with bubble cavities
on a flattened out Mount St. Helens
of ashes and agglomerates.

Which flow event formed the fine ash
from fire fountain magma […]

Drink was flowing by the River Ember
under placid skies above Island Barn Reservoir
where The Bell was surrounded by Alsatians
scattered on burnt grass in black and umber,
fresh from the water to kettle their […]

The general synopsis at dusk:
land around the coastal weather station
has been requisitioned for table football.

A huge tournament by the College of Agriculture’s
inshore waters gathers all the […]

As when the present is slightly off –
Bourneville, Perrier, a Foster’s crate
for the beachfront whiteout game –

we’re back again for testing and a psychometric probe
at just the time we had unwound, […]

When your plans are stationary
like a boat tied up at the dock
inexorably, you just can’t get going
without buttering up the ref’

by learning about his name, his family,
his route convoluted by […]

Support your skeleton going forward
or embrace its weakness. I can’t do it for you.
It depends on what your long term goals are –
where you see yourself in five years’ time.

The important thing is to eat eve […]

As Welcome as the sight of allotment smoke in December,
a quiet bonfire in the winter stillness,
are the compressed distances of Sports Report,
fingers hardened in the dusk after hours
of working the ground, […]

One day from under these floodlights
the sun will rise in early spring,
set like the memories you’ve left
in gathering blue over the river.

An extra layer will go, light jackets
the order of the day at some […]

Madejski of the methane vents, hero
of South Reading hinterland wastes
made shiny and blue for out-of-town games

at Junction 11: Madejski of the 1970’s
where the marlin fishing never ends
from South Florida […]

The lines, angles and shapes are wrong. Which
algal bloom will form when the ground has gone –
sunk or deserted – while for now Peru find time
left them, talent still potent, reminiscing
about far post […]

Somewhere beyond the wastes of Nizhny Novgorod
in enveloping white, the farthest reaches of night,
a train rattles on through heights and depths
with passengers lost to perspective journeying
through life to […]