Football Poets

Is winning at football
Just gaining your dad’s approval?

Paradise regained
Or is it Paradise Lost?
Please lose, Milton’s Keynes.

The last minute goal?
Football’s space-time paradox:
Infinite finite.

In the kingdom they define as the blind,
The one eyed man is often called the king,
But the man with cosmetic dentistry
Isn’t.

Who cares if England play like wimps,
When Swindon win away at the Imps.

Celery can travel with some celerity,
But would the salariat prefer celeriac?

From Elgar to Smith,
From Art to economist –
Not quite the ticket.

It wasn’t Gerry Hitchens,
But rather Charles Dickens,
(The top-hatted man,
A Gillingham fan)
Whose celebrated character,
The impecunious Micawber,
When discoursing wide on rickets,
And the price of football t […]

It does seem crowded doesn’t it?
When you’re cheek by jowl at rush hour,
Or stuck in a monotonous motorway jam,
With an endless stream of men
In different coloured football shirts
Leaving their Saturday carbon boo […]

Atmosphere is
Four floodlights beaming in a moonlit sky,
With a singing, chanting crowd
(That is divided in its loyalty.
There is no homogeneity,
Away fans welcome,
Cheap and with a view.)
Enmity on the pitch […]

Nineteen Sixty One,
Swindon one Halifax one,
No rhyme nor reason.

From Real Madrid
It’s just a free carbon kick
To unreal L.A.

Less of a window,
More of a revolving door;
With no glass ceiling.

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 old f […]

Come Back Dad
And hide “British History For Boys”
Underneath my pillow while I’m asleep,
As a surprise coming home present.
Come Back Dad
And bring home Mars Bars and eucalyptus sweets
On Thursday pay night […]

Men who a few short months before the slaughter
Had voted Socialist,
And who had voted internationalist,
Who had struck for higher wages,
Against their respective employers and Capital,
Were now once more […]

When War broke out, the British public cried
“We’ll be in Berlin by Christmas”.
But by Christmas hundreds of thousands had died,
As Mons, The Marne, Ypres and Messine cut
Down the youth of Europe, while Fland […]

A man can be wise
And yet possess no wisdom
Apart from his teeth.

So there’s the lost glove again,
Down behind autumn’s withered flowers,
Token of a spring-promise Sunday planting,
Then gone like love’s forgotten hand,
Or the unrecognised signature
Of some unremembered goalkeeper.

The Thames and Severn Canal
Was just like every other canal I’ve ever been on,
As I cycled along by lock, bridge and wharf,
With meadow and green Cotswold Hill,
Sluice gate and sun bleached red brick m […]