Football Poets

You seem a stalwart chap, Sam,
on that we’d be first to own,
the sort of bloke we’d meet at pub
and treat to a pint of brown.

Sam, you’re as solid as Bolton
you’ve managed to renown;
your name, too, Sam […]

I see you at your Vatican window as you deliver
your appeal for world peace and you release
two white doves with the boy who reminds you
of your Polish childhood kicking a balled cloth
that substituted for a […]

“Am I so round with you, as you with me,
that like a football, you do spurn me thus?”
A Comedy of Errors, Act 2, Scene 1

I scored! I scored! Verily, all of you saw it,
the ball came flighted over from the left […]

“Nor tripped neither, you base football player…”
King Lear, Act 1, Scene 4

What fool you? That you wouldst trip me
as I was about to score: Bard 1 Thine 0;

thou were sent packing, one red card won.
I picked […]

The St. John’s River not the Mersey
and it’s the Super Bowl in Florida
not Anfield or Goodison or Wembley:
halftime during football with the hands
not so much the feet,
and the former Beatle’s in fine voice
as […]

my Dad used to call it
when we emigrated to the States
in the mid-Fifties
real footie we played
in contrast to that other stuff
when Basil would wrestle with
aluminium on his rabbit ears
to try to wrench a […]

took me to see South Liverpool
we froze standing on the terraces
on that damp dull Saturday in Garston
with no one else nearby.

We stamped our feet
till halftime
a cuppa tea
and a pork pie
to warm us up
for the […]

Iraq has voted, less bloodily
than might have been feared,
though bloody uncertainty persists.
In a hopeful Allawi government ad,
U.S. tanks grind across the desert
toward the border, dust swirling.
Lads drop a […]

It surely bears comparison to Maradona’s
“Hand of God” goal versus England,
the superb flyer El-Hadji Diouf took,

airbound in the Ewood Park air
beyond the desperate fingers
of Blackburn’s keeper Brad […]

Pelé kicked the ball:
the ball’s charmed trajectory
—one more golden goal.

Lads play footie on
waste ground, use bricks for goalposts,
somehow learn the skills.

Christopher T. George

All those winter evenings, Grandad listened
to BBC Radio as he went over Vernon’s Pools,
so many names to me as I played by the fire:
Leyton Orient, Brighton and Hove Albion,
and all the exotic Scottish names l […]

In that factory land, Ted Hughes country,
with its dour names, Oswaldtwistle, Bury,
Hebden Bridge, Mytholmroyd, Heptonstall,
the ‘Pool brought their hopes

of FA Cup glory, but with a second string team,
all the […]

In those icy waters, with winter coming on,
a computer guides the conqueror worm to its target.
At Goose Green, a playing pitch has been cratered
with bombs. The shrapnel in a soldier’s chest
outweighs the […]

Prince Harry dresses for a fancy dress party
swastikaed in Nazi uniform. Di Canio proffers
a fascist salute after his team Lazio beats
Roma 3-1. What of all the misery, blood,
and horror that occurred under […]

Throw out the
French deck,
farm out the dreck,
advertise your best,
make a quid or two–
Michael to Madrid,
Danny to Charlton;
bring in Luis, Fernando,
Xabi, Mauricio. . . shuffle
them all around, and then
what […]

A branch of May:
a memory
of how at age five I ran
across Penny Lane
railway bridge,
a crayoned Union Jack
flapping in my hand.

1953: Coronation Year!
In class at Dovedale Primary I received
a mug with […]

A prime example of a player
who should put his game
where his mouth is,
a footballer who will never
come within spitting distance of fame.

Christopher T. George

The Sally Gas are to close the home.
The strip of grass where I played footie
outside the Beaconsfield Road mansion
beyond the red iron gates with leaves
of strawberries and strawberry flowers,
where me mates and […]

I exhibit the monster conker secretly in poetry class,
and bets are laid for the lunch-time tournament,
Toby Cash, in a reverie, oblivious to our whispers,
paces the room, delivers an impassioned recitation
of […]

An away match down south–follow the team everywhere.
Sleep in your scarf the night before so they’ll win.
We lose anyway. The train journey back at night.
Boozy men stagger down moving corridors. Engaged:
I wait […]