Football Poets

It was that time of the year when winter and spring
Walk hand in hand, with crisp wind, bars of sunshine,
Saturday afternoon cumulus clouds,
Splashes of blue, shouts of “muddied oafs”,
And a referee’s whist […]

Pythagoras thought
About the meat pie he’d bought
That meat pies r square.

Would you bet six quid
On the psychic octopus
Being a sick squid?

So when I look back, what do I remember?

The regressive sense of anticipation,

Being a boy again but with Christmas Eve in summer:

Digging my plot and seeing red ants and slow worms –

The imagination goes on […]

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet.
No more old stereotypes.
All our yesterdays.

A dribbling parrot,
Three dreaming lions, supine;
And a palsied rose.

Last week, kick and rush;
This week, kick without the rush;
Next? No kick? No rush?

With sanctuary,
Persecuted refugees
Find refuge’s goal.

“So come on England”,
Eton and the white van man
Speak the same language.

You know how it is, some nights you just can’t sleep:
The wife went out to the pub to watch the game last night,
I stayed at home and tired after work,
Fell asleep at 10 only to be woken by Trish at 1;
She g […]

France v Uruguay,
Irritable vowel syndrome:
But no end result.

The word “quality”,
Chris Waddle’s constant cliché,
Is not quality.

The Beautiful Game
Gave freedom-fighters respite
In freedom’s struggle.

Apartheid’s victims,
In Robben Island’s prison
Played the Peoples’ Game.

It was an escape,
But also an expression:
The need for new r […]

“Nelson Mandela.”
The whole wide world shouts your name:
The end of Babel.

“Bloomin’ Football”, a World Cup floral festival,
Early June, at St. Mary Magdalene’s:
World Cup flags draped from yew tree to porch,
Countries portrayed in displays of flowers,
Firstly, Brazil, created by Sarah f […]

World Cup Haiku 7

“People of the Grass”,
Hear the Setswana language,
See the Bafokeng.

Edible grasses,
Once grown by the Bafokeng
To feed their cattle.

Now the Kikuyu,
Hardy grass seed from Kenya,
Then str […]

WORLD CUP HAIKU1
A Rainbow Nation
Arcs across the shanty towns
Bulldozed for football.

WORLD CUP HAIKU2
Green Point Stadium,
Stares out at Robben Island:
Ghosts stare from cells.
(Nelson Mandela’s prison: […]

Over a hundred years ago, or so,
When Britannia ruled the waves,
And the sun never set on former slaves,
We went to war in South Africa
Not the one with Michael Caine,
But the one that led to fighting in the […]

So it was modern life is rubbish again:
My brother booked our train tickets over the internet,
The server went down half way through,
He had to ‘phone up and do it all over again,
The server went down again, but R […]

So off we go to the capital city,
Sons and daughters of steam,
Sons and daughters of the plough,
Along the permanent way;
First, a pilgrimage to St. Mary’s, Putney,
Scene of the 1647 Putney Debates,
“I think tha […]