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Stuart Butler

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    I love Wednesday night’s walking football:
    The gathering dusk of late October:
    Floodlights lighting the way to goal,
    While a moon rises high in the sky,
    Illuminating childhood memories
    Of yesteryear’s Aut […]

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    It must have been 1965,
    We were having a lunchtime kick-about.
    ‘It’s Good News Week’ by Hedgehoppers’ Anonymous
    Was playing on someone’s transistor
    Just behind the goal nearest the school,
    Someone was puffi […]

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    When watching Brazil

    It’s just like watching Brazil.

    Life’s like that sometimes.

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    I was determined to boycott the World Cup,
    And be like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress:
    Avoiding all seductive temptations,
    And deceptions from the ‘beautiful game’ –
    For the arguments against watch […]

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    That autumnal expedition to Brimscombe
    Seems all a bit too good to be true:
    Cycling past that spring alongside Bagpath,
    Where an old Rodborough resident
    Once slaked his thirst descending to Brimscombe,
    Where […]

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    It was all so just so Just William perfect:
    Egg sandwiches, crisps and lemonade
    Tucked into your duffel bag,
    Together with autograph book, green, red and black biros,
    And Ian Allan trainspotter books […]

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    Now I’m not sure if there’s a debate here
    About determinism and free will,
    Or whether there’s just some sort of reflection
    On 60 years spent going to the match,
    That LS Lowry feeling of being lost in a crowd […]

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    I felt as though I were in a poem:
    ‘Afternoons’ by Philip Larkin –
    I was off to sheltered accommodation
    To see my mother-in-law (91),
    Wishing a ‘Good afternoon’ to residents
    Out for their slow afternoon […]

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    The day started well enough: a walk to town
    In the soft light of soft autumnal sunshine,
    Ridge and furrow with kine in the fields;
    Drunken Swindon fans trying to walk straight,
    Whilst Lord John bantering with […]

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    When I was a kid, I lived for football.
    Kicking a ball against a wall,
    Playing in the road, using street names as goal posts,
    Playing ‘Five and In’,
    Practising and practising and practising,
    Until it got too […]

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    Ye Prologue:
    There’s an old radical tradition
    Of beating pots and pans in the street,
    Making a public din
    (Rather than a private dinner),
    Ringing bells, banging pans, blowing horns,
    With domestic utensils u […]

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    When the working class was first given the vote,
    The Home Secretary said:
    ‘We must educate our masters’;

    The result was the Education Act,
    Which resulted in elementary schools,
    Throughout the cities, tow […]

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    It’s possible to shout that in umpteen different languages
    And still mean it.
    ‘Fee, Fie, Fo, Fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman’
    And what does that smell like?
    It smells of Prehistoric Beaker Folk from […]

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    Buy George, bye George, by George,
    It’s my jubilee too this year,
    Fifty years of hopes and fears,
    And while you couldn’t call my life
    A total exercise in active citizenship,
    You couldn’t call it total subje […]

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    At the end of the day
    There are no easy games at this level
    And two-nil is a dangerous lead
    When It’s a game of two halves
    But goals win games
    And it’s a good touch for a big man
    When parking the bus […]

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    Remember when the Likely Lads
    Wanted to avoid the final score?
    Well, this was the exact opposite:
    A twenty first century digital version
    Where we expect constant updates and news.

    But don’t get t […]

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    In Perpetua

    Mobile? Strange paradox

    Immobile moves

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    It came upon a midnight clear, 
    That glorious song of old, 
    When angels bent down to the earth, 
    And changed machine guns into harps,  
    And turned leaden bullets into golden carols 
    That drifted across no m […]

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    It was the perfect present,
    Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly Annual,
    A book that took me instantly back
    To a brown linoleum floor
    And a hot fire cold room winter,
    Studying a dog eared package
    Of 5 year o […]

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    You called on Christmas Eve afternoon,
    Carrying an unwrapped parcel,
    A gift brought from memory lane:
    David Dangerfield’s dad’s football boots,
    Slightly battered but proud and dubbined,
    Though still sme […]

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Source: http://footballpoets.org/members/stuart/