Football Poets

He plays in the middle
like it’s June on the reef
with a touch as light as lemon drizzle,
feet which glide upon a thermal
and defenders left in disbelief

Managers go. Migrate with phantoms
of the present on staircases in frames.
Who stops on the turn and sees the lifting?
Silverware and crow’s feet.

People come and go. Hotel rooms,
breakfast, silence in the […]

I can’t remember if around this pitch
kite feathers drift across the scrubland,
but two men with an Alsatian
walk the perimeter, searching.

It isn’t safe for children, this public facility,
with ‘Danger of […]

Within the East Stand’s intemperate tropics,
beneath those apocryphal prawns,
life is measured by flat perspectives.

Managers, akin to former prime ministers
pacing Fife platforms with friendly fire
and oblique […]

Closed books. We simply couldn’t read them.
Open training sessions traced a line of logic
across our columns. It was errant. Non-existent.

The real plan was made behind the double doors
behind the double doors […]

A tour of east coast marine
towns and villages,
flat Lincolnshire fields
and The Wash yields
easily-reached-for names:
Mariners, Pilgrims, odd
ways round to Southwold,
grammatically shot to bits
by Ipswich, […]

No fences are broken here
where none exist
in a suburb of Copenhagen
where Astro-turfs open to everyone.

No paradise, these gardens,
and such high winds that goalposts
lifted, moved with the stones
that pelted […]

Placed in the constellation Perseus,
he angles a tethered, synthetic planet
into the goal before an end of season cast
of sombrero-wearing fans: Daggers to the last.

Late witnesses observe a curious phenomenon
of […]

Lost, my ball in the crossflow winds.
Collapse the tactics board
now there’s only Route One.
Let’s see where it falls.

Hope the van won’t topple outside
old Brentford dock, buffered
by all those tower blocks
we […]

rarely rose from their seats,
at scythings of stars didn’t flinch.
Impassive, ever-present for mid week
coach journeys to the Yorkshire coast,
losses at Scarborough and Grimsby,
reflections dark models of […]

No one was there
for The Great Unveiling

The stadium was empty
save for the men
from The Eastern Daily

as X raised a scarf
to say that when Y phoned

there was no hesitation,
that he loved the fens,
the broads, […]

Early rays
form car-park shadows
for our pre-shift game.

The chiropractor
floats balls onto roof tiles,
lets them descend

for diagnosis.
You’re Sheringham, I’m Shilton
diving on windscreens.

When you […]

Instinct control on a pitch so waterlogged
we could have kayaked: well just forget it.

Who wouldn’t slide in where they shouldn’t,
emerging from a coal mine lagoon
every form of slate seems to blacken?

Make a […]

They had to name it Mudchute
so no fans would go there,
isolate the station like the Isle of Poplars.

Pitches where Millwall Rovers played
and council tenants co-exist

with a Docklands Museum in place of […]

Mid-winter mercury for a Croydon internationalist
is always high. Air miles could take him to Andromeda
before it reaches us. He could represent Earth
on credit from Alitalia. So if Wilshere smokes,
it means […]

‘Our new manager
looks like a bus driver.’

No uniform image arrives.
Bus drivers are so diverse though, Sid.
There are differences in nature,
temperament and manner
from London to Riga,
Kingston to […]

Sleeping in an allotment in North Sheen
Storm petrels and cormorants overhead
I think about the Balearics,
that Balearic beat,
the summer of love 1988
Ecstasy was riding a BMX as light faded,
kicking a ball […]

They hardly paved paradise
on the edge of Wigan.

There was no edenic innocence
to corrupt in Stoke
or wild, untouched Bolton groves.

There were no secret forests
or magic woods of South Reading;
that was a […]

Bering strait, Labrador,
an arctic wind towards
North Sea island pitches

Brora Rangers, aurora chances.
The time of day is unfixed
as the crescent moon and sun
together in the darkness
over Sutherland and […]

Norfolk Jim arrived home at 4am
concerned about the stewarding.
‘The club should have a look at this’
he commented, ‘it’s no good
loading seats onto season tickets,
it’s a recipe for carnage.’
A freight train had […]