Football Poets

Money – yesterday the club was sad and blue
Money – you smiled on us and said “it could be you!”
Now we feel ten feet tall
And we just bought the Albert Hall
Just to have a place to keep all our
Money

Money – […]

everybody’s talking ’bout Chelsea
everybody has to have their say
everybody’s desperate to beat them
let’s forget the talking let’s just play

Keegan was a great one for emotion
“a swallow doesn’t make a summer’s […]

isn’t it strange how emotions can change
like a blink in the wink of an eye
when just for a moment your world it stands still
no matter how hard you may try

I was back in a place in a whole other space
and […]

it comes from where no man can say
yet while you live it will not stray
but haunt your being night and day
football our obsession

in any land at any time
in sand or stadium divine
its magnet force will not […]

there has to be a space – we still need a place
for every single member of the whole human race
and don’t let them fool you the problem’s gone away
underneath the suface it’s lingering today
at all-seater stadiums […]

get me out of here
I must away
this office this desk
some prison today

how lucky am I
no locks and no keys
the gift to be free
and to do as I please

no lights going out
save the moon in my sky
we never say […]

it’s always there
wating for us all
that reality of life
the one we never want to discuss
at ground in bars
but as in being and breathing
so too in football

where sad but true
it matters little who you are
or […]

I still feel funny with you not here
even though it’s been a long time
I still keep missing you I don’t know why
I only know I feel it deep inside

I feel it on the weekend at the break of day
and I feel it in […]

I could have been a keeper
protecting all I own
in every team I’ve always been
the one who stood alone
the needle in a haystack
with trusty hand and fist
i moved the goalposts to become
an acupuncturist

I c […]

I pity the rich substitute
the bench their season’s home
they remonstrate but relegate
their painful thoughts alone
the bank may smile and stay content
their partners understand
suchs fleeting talent […]

25 Years of Attila on the mike*

head-space in your face what is he like!

rock gigs cafes the unis and the squats

anti-fascist youth centres festivals the lot

he’s a social ‘ institution’ but not for the Q […]

we pay so much to see them we pay them well I know

we pay to see them play not wilt in sun or rain or snow

we marvel at their pace and speed their fitness makes us gasp

we have the talent standing by it’s here […]

what keeps us strong is simple

the need to feel the same

but sadness overwhelms our souls

we search for those to blame

the sniffer dogs at stations

security on rooves

our awkward habits magnified

while […]

round here it’s pretty middle class so many are secure
but underneath our sleepy town so many aren’t for sure
in frightened nights on Hackney streets it’s harsher than we know
with drugs and knives and ruined […]

weaving magic still

tiny spark and impish smile

come back please Zola!

you are poetry on legs

and find me a father or mother here
who would not take their child
to watch Zola play?

Wordsworth and Coleridge
they too might struggle
to embrace portray or catch his beauty

once in a […]

with Zola gone
whose grace and style
to compare with the morning sun
not that I did compare
but i do now that Zola’s gone

passed overhead look
so close I’m almost playing
here on this dog track

where now i wonder
woollen names of long gone stars
sewn on my first scarf?

only ninepence then
yet sixpence was a fortune
when I was just ten