Football Poets

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 Europ […]

“Is it a tale of self-abuse
Or non-violent direct action?
Or is it playing fast and loose
With discipline and not faction?”

Forest Green on TV in the FA Cup,
Down here, near Stroud, in the village, Nailsworth,
Where I penned this little poem, this poem that I send,
Please read the explanatory notes, down at the poem’s end:
THE J […]

By all that’s calendrical,
Black History month seems somewhat tokenistic
Don’t you think?
By all that’s zodiacal,
It amounts to just one twelfth of the total,
Just 8 point 3 per cent of the annual,
Leaving 91 po […]

Did anyone else in the crowd at Gloucester City,
Watching the football on that cold autumn day,
Also see the ghosts of Black Britannia,
As I did in that dying sun’s ray,
For there they were in numinous g […]

On the Friday, in A Level History,
We watched some grainy archive footage of Adolf Hitler
In stunned and mournful silence;
This wasn’t “merely academic”,
This was History with open hearted compassion.
And when […]

Crispin’s Great Conker Debate has raised another interesting question about traditional British culture. But before that, many of our overseas visitors to the website must have no idea what conkers involve – ple […]

By all that’s calendrical,
Black History month seems somewhat tokenistic
Don’t you think?
By all that’s zodiacal,
It amounts to just one twelfth of the total,
Just 8 point 3 per cent of the annual,
Leaving 91 po […]

Without wanting to get too mathematical or philosophical,
Ontological, existential and metaphysical,
May I ask the sighted of you a question please?
What do you see when you look at a football pitch?
That is, a […]

the Whole is greater than the sum of its parts,
But the Hole is greater than its volume.
Football Unites,
Racism Divides.

Football unites us,
But racism divides us,
Unity adds up.

In this drum and bass world,
It’s hard to catch any silence,
Let alone hang on to it.
It’s rare to hear nothing
But the sound of your own heart-beat,
Or the song of a blackbird,
Or the rustle of the leaves in the […]

Bobby Moore 2 John Keats 0
David Beckham 4 William Wordsworth 0
Boy George 2 Lord Byron 0
Michael Crawford 3 WB Yeats 0
William Blake 5 Alan Shearer 0
William Shakespeare 7 Stuart Hall 5
Johnny Rotten 1 Basil the […]

Football Time

I was never
That close to my Dad.
He was a Chindit.
And
Fighting behind Japanese lines
Gave hime
20 years of
Mood swings
And irrational
Bursts of unpredicatable
Temper.
But one […]

Why don’t people whistle anymore?
My dad used to embarrass me
With his whistling constantly,
Any refrain
That came in his brain,
And he could go on for hours
And hours
And hours;
And even though he embarrassed m […]

Walking through the appropriately named Gunnerside,
Listening to an Easter tide Arsenal victory on the radio.
Watching the desultory interest in the Queen Mother’s death
As the football results came in on the […]

“Trish is all I wish;
She is my satellite dish,
Sky, sun, moon and stars.”

When I watch Brazil,
It’s just like watching Brazil.
Do I not like that.

“When I watch Brazil,
It’s just like watching Brazil.
Life’s like that sometimes.”

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 […]