Football Poets

So my dear Crispin, what can I say about the great Wembley debate?
Firstly, the self-evident point that all Wembley meanings and memories
Are partial in both time and space and are defined by one’s g […]

Total Football is when an entire stadium is engrossed in silent Euclidean space-time analysis
Whilst simultaneously chewing on stale meat and potato pies at half time;
Total Football is a constant fluidity of […]

With this new First World feeling of vulnerability,
Fashionable irony goes out the window
Just as the gas masks are passed in,
(“It’ll be my third world war”, says my mum)
Concerns about asteroids, Kyoto, cars […]

It’s that time of the year when autumn’s yellow leaves
Bring a golden yellow light to widespread spiders’ webs,
And all those windblown thistle heads,
That time of the year when you kick an apple across the commo […]

For the nonce we visited Nonza,
And swapping shirts with Shakespeare,
We sat in the leafy square of Nonza,
With Port Vale fans Barry, Janet and Matt,
High up in this Corsican dreamland village
Of pastel painted […]

Sven: “How now, Spirit? Whither wander you?”
Beckham: “Over hill, over dale,
Through bush, through briar,
Over park, over pale,
Through flood, through fire,
Swifter than the moon’s sphere;
And I serve you Wizard […]

Staam: (soliloquising)
“Oh Sir Alex Prospero,
Why has’t thou banished me to Lazio?
There was’t I, with the kitchen order from MFI,
And scullions fetching hogs heads of Advocaat
From the general victu […]

Yes, I remember Adlestrop –
The name, because it was 1966 when
The station name board was offered
Unwontedly. To Oxford, after Swindon.

The dream wished. Someone cleaned the hall.
The sign-board saying […]

Yes, I remember Adlestrop –
The name, because in 1966
The station name board was offered
Unwontedly. To Swindon, June the 6th.

The dream wished. Someone cleared his throat.
No-one had heard of Adlestrop
In the […]

How like an inconstant lover thou hast been,
For if I take thee in mine arms and hold thee fast,
Thou dost choose to bounce into the centre forward’s path
And he doth then court thee and crash thee into mine o […]

I’ve always worn boots since becoming bourgeois,
To try and pretend I’ve still got working class roots, I suppose;
But what with the heat-wave,
The relentless style attack from wife and daughters,
And the inc […]

It was a beautiful July day and there was the view before me!
Bayham Road, south Bristol, just by Perrett Park,
Fuchsia filled front gardens and all those hanging baskets
In all their petunia filled glory, in all […]

86 years ago today, on Bastille Day, my mum was born and on that day, July 14th. 1915, Edward Thomas wrote his poem “For These”, explaining why he was joining up. It’s a description of English country livin […]

Sunlight smoked through the leaves of the sycamore trees,
Their tall trunks overhanging the railway cutting,
Dads dug spuds from their allotments,
Purple geraniums lit up the parish churchyard,
And a poppy […]

APPLE TREES
I was reading “The Ghost Road”,
With its constant theme of father-son relationships,
And,
Reflecting on the past,
I glanced up at the apple trees in the back garden,
And was surprised at how thick the […]

Doctor Frocester went to Gloucester
All in a shower of rain,
He stepped in a puddle
Right up to his middle
And never went there again;
So he wouldn’t know about
All the ways in which we shout
“Come on Eng […]

See the humble peasant and honest tiller of the soil
Wander penniless in search of fields to plough,
Turfed out by sheep and landlord’s all enclosing greed;
See the lowly soldiers put out to seed by their k […]

It was a cold clear frosty day early in the year,
When team and ref and crowd alike all stared into the air,
As sunlight caught the jumbo jet coming into land,
Both untroubled goalkeepers blew on freezing […]

Quotas won’t bring natural justice,
Ethics transcend Economics.

Oi Ref,
Give these refugees a refuge.
And don’t spit out the word “refugee”
Like it’s a swear word or an expletive;
Remember where the word comes from,
From the word, “refuge”,
A soft and welcoming word,
Like […]