Football Poets

there’s an eerie silence as I head off to bed –
the silence is natural
for I’m always the last to settle

but there’s a sense of devastation that permeates the corridors
a sense of damnation and enforce […]

Like a gnarled old hand, the spindly tree spread out above me
Stooped over the country lane
Its silhouetted fingers, tickling the hedge-hemmed curious calves

Lying in wait somewhere, hidden and camouflaged […]

If I wasn’t Ossie for the day
Then I’d be the Cat
For he was our hero
And that was that

All over the goalbox
He’d leap and spring
“There’s only one Peter Bonetti”
Oh, how the Shed would sing

And now […]

Days stretched into weeks
No football, at all
Football is just a game, say those who don’t get it
To us, it’s all we’ve ever known
the centre of everything we’ve planned
Friendlies, cup, home and away, […]

I was twelve when you first made your debut
on a long ago cold March day
and I stood down the front in the Shed with my mates
as we did ev’ry time in our way
and we watched you as like a magician
you would […]

The nest-builders are as busy as ever….
a delightfully dappled thrush appears at one of my garden pots
checks surreptitiously for danger
instinctively knows I am fastened behind the bars, of toughened g […]

A bird flew north over Italy
Over Naples’ volcanic home
Which worshipped Maradona in his prime
Flew over Lazio and the Olimpico
Climbed up its high ellipse
Heading for the evening sun
On her distant seven h […]

Wherever we find ourselves
Life we know on hold
Terraces we stood on closed
Seats in stands lie cold
Rituals on match days
Little lost routines
How they seem quite futile now
In these current […]

way back in the fifties new Queen on the throne
all we had was comics in our basement home
tennis balls ice cream vans football in the street
coalman came on Fridays life was so complete
Blow Football […]

Usually, it’s an acerbic reaction
An emphatic ‘bothered’ and ‘bemoaned’
Whence learning of:
“All matches postponed”

But this time around
We nod and agree when it’s intoned
For containment of […]

there are places where a coat of paint would do right
you need thermals even in the August games
the raffle can quite often be the highlight
but something draws you back each time again
the crowd is often […]

There once was a bug called Corona,
That caused many games to postpona.
Juve-Inter for sure,
Sev’ral other match more,
Not least of which Samp v Verona.

2/3/20
Denys E. W. Jones

There’s players on the pitch,
There’s linesmen and a ref,
There’s journalists and TV crews,
As rightly you’d expect.

But there are no supporters,
No cheering, chanting crowd,
The game’s being p […]

I watched the first half live last night
then I switched off
for I guessed what would follow:
lauded team of Albion, one down to an early, fluky goal
a team unquenchable in the domestic league
but up against […]

sometimes we judge our players
by the way that they behave
a striker for his scoring
and a keeper for his saves
we even tag some heroes
and one deserves that claim
a man who didn’t just save goals […]

they say that it’s impractical they say we’ve gotta go
they say we really have to move but some of us say no
and yes it needs improvements the parking and the ground
but nothing is impossible that’s what […]

I crossed over the road from the undertakers
walked in through the park gate
and there it was:
my old pitch, bathed in beautiful sun
still there
still marked, still in obvious use
And I remembered back
to […]

if you were alive
child woman or man
you remember the day still
like yesterday
like Lennon like Kennedy
or the day we landed on the moon
the day we woke to realise
we’d lost a football team

that moment […]

They thought we were dead and buried,
Two minutes to go till half-time.
We’re sure we were dead and buried,
But there’s always hope where there’s life.

They thought we were dead and buried,
Two down, not […]

“By which a strip of land became a hole in time” – Dúrs Grunbein

The rec still holds the voices:
I pick Petie
I pick Paulie
I pick Danno
I pick Scanner…..
Or is it just compartments of my beleaguered mi […]