Football Poets

“Johnny Rhythm” his fans would roar him on
Any stadium he would fill
Those cathedrals rocked to the rooftops
Sublime moments of genius
That hung long in the air
Like chords of chiselled notes
“We love you […]

I was born in Nineteen Sixty -Three
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
and the Beatles first LP
Sir Roger Hunt scored 31 goals
In that Liverpool championship team
Shankly’s reds my auld man said
The best […]

Walk on Walk on with
Hope in our hearts for you will
Never walk alone.

We love you Arthur
We do, we love you Arthur
Arthur we love you.

These days I am of the age
Where my football heroes
And my music heroes
Are dropping like leaves from a tree
The clock is ticking, the bell tolls for us all
The not so slow return of Christmas
When I have […]

We all tried to copy your passes
When we were kids
After watching you split open
The best defences
But we couldn’t match you
No one could, tho they tried
There was only ever one “Razor”
Shanks knew, and s […]

Now a nation Greaves
Nicotine stained terraces
Miraculous goals.

All of life
Coursing through
Each thirsty vein
Binding dreams
And racing off down a road
That opened its journey
Upon the shoulders
Of the broad elephantine figure
Bayern’s ‘The little cannon’
Carrying a […]

We’ve got a new striker
He’s fast and he’s fleet
He’s got thunder for boots
And lightning for feet!
We paid out in millions
For his first touch is sweet
He’s quicker than sugar
Dissolving in tea!
His […]

What poetry would pour
From gilded boots
Flashing like blades
Vibrant the pulse thudding
With a slow moving seduction of senses
Betwixt steaming pies and mushy peas
Whilst the doppelgangers of […]

in the hidden secrets of a small cafe
on a bookshop narrowboat jostling
against the canal sides
an empty terrace filled with the sounds
of lost dreams and old songs
beyond the rubble of lies and the […]

You can feel the excitement, taste the energy
This is a proper football crowd come back home, European night game
And walking up Lambeth Road past Sandhills never felt so good
Them there Beatles adorn The […]

Monday Night Football
Home again…

After sojourns
Through wins and losses
loves and heartbreaks
non-league and grassroots

in the fullness of time
all things must pass
and move
this too.

Give me an England of Rashford and Saka
Of Sancho and Sterling and Co
Give me an England of Southgate
Not the racists and bullies on show
I don’t want an England of ticketless louts
Who think that it’s all […]

when we sleep as mute as dust
returned to earth and dead as rust
then ask of each and every one of us
how well did you play the game, cuz?

We’re not looking for those miracles
We’re not looking for the boots of gold
We just want some football fireworks
That lift our weary souls
We’re not searching for El Dorado
Or the myths of bold Gawain […]

everything is political
economics rules
like your accent which school you went to
or didn’t
we carry these burdens unto the grave
classified & categorised
don’t need a virus or jab to track & trace […]

sets our broken hearts on fire
raises long-lost hopes
like pilgrims gripped by holy grails
we spring back off the ropes

we never learn we long to dream
like children scanning skies
for reindeer and […]