Football Poets

It is the mark of the man
To be known by his deeds
Not words
When stars dipped down low in the sky
Squinting and illuminated
For one night in Istanbul
Bringing auld Big Ears back home
And we was fab again
We sang […]

In the year of Our Lord nineteen fourteen
The call came for lads to join up with a team
So they packed up their boots with their hopes and dreams
And they offered their hearts for the price of a shilling

For the […]

The Gaza strip
Should be a football shirt
Of neutral colours
One size fits all…

Splattered with sweat
Not sanctimonious lessons not learnt
From history

Worn with peace
Not pieces of bodies

Played on a p […]

The “Blonde Arrow”
Brightest star
Whose joy nursed the birth pangs
Of football
The apostle whose ministry preached
The beautiful game
With his boots wedded to the ball
How well he would build the attack
And sen […]

With my heart well and truly battered
and sprung from nets of cynicism
three-pronged desires of sovereignty
I give to thee…
Battered heart and fortress soul
complicit with the shadows of
the childhood ghosts […]

Moses plays for Liverpool
And like the risen Christ
The Red sea flows back senses alive
And swells impregnated
With the thirst of the many
For the glory of the few.

I was caught up in the nets
Of a soon to be broken
Love affair
And dizzy with desire
I was distracted
Until
Suarez’ scalpel boots scythed
Through defences
And cut me free.

Just three words
Batter my heart
I love you
This is Anfield
We Go Again.

How he turns this trickster
His boots wedded
To the dreams of Kopites
Batter my heart with your free kicks
Batter my heart with your impish guile
Batter my heart with your reckless dives
Whilst I, mesmerized,
Can […]

Your eyes sparkle
Like a Sterling trick,
Your hair curls like
A Suarez free kick,
Skin as smooth as a Dalglish turn
My love for you, it burns, it burns.

I see you in dreams,
Your beauty like
A thirty yard, […]

The sleeping giant
That roared your legend again and again
With passion and muscle and faith
Opened the arms of a town
Built from the invincible bastion
Of victory
To robe all in the lilywhite
The original dream […]

The most cultured of pearls
The quiet boy whose questioning eyes
Watched the brilliance of the stars
Shine out from the dark Mozambique nights
To become one of their number
He who thundered in goals
With a dignity […]

Football
Is a noisy philosophy
A wheel of fire
That burns its fireworks
In the boots of legends
And the hearts of fans
Where names inscribed on the soul
Shine immortal
With the ghosts
Of football past.

Did not play much football
And when he raced across Strawberry Fields
He ghosted between the spaces of childhood
Slipped unnoticed behind the gaps
Where nothing is real
Except the Eccho of the past
He didn’t […]

Hendrix covers little wings
Whilst Elvis just gets fat
Little Richard pounds the net
Chuck Berry you just can’t catch

Jerry Lee with balls of fire
He rattles up and shakes
Jim “The Lizard” Morrison
Who dreams […]

Come back Kenny
And turn defences dizzy
With your Presley hips
As your magic dazzles all who watch

Come back Kenny
And once more your name an anthem
Reaches the Red skies from throats
Blistered with hope and […]

The magician di Stefano
White arrow silver string
From the burning bow
That is the Madrilenos
And Gento his flamboyant colours
Brave as Picasso and passionate as Lorca

Kopa came out from the mines a miracle made […]

From the echoes of childhood those songs sing to me
The pitches of tarmac whose stones cut my knees
The wind and the rain would never deter
And the mud that stuck to me clung fast to my shirt
I would turn to my […]

The dreaming of peace that is heaven
An elegant pause in the light
A bright shining star in the silence
That burns in the dead of the night
A voice then but quietly whispers
And comforts my doubts and my […]

Some they will look to the peace of the dreaming
Solace to anguish a balm to the soul
The sighs of the heart will entwine ever shadow
Implore of the moon with a prayer wildly thrown
The thunder of passion is an […]