Football Poets

On a bench in Space,
The Manager on the Moon.
Still not over it.

The globe spins in space.
Like a football, it will burst
With too much hot air.

So here I sit in Whittington House,
Alfred Place, Holborn, WC1,
Following in Dick’s footsteps straight from Stroud,
Speeding along the steeled permanent way,
To where the streets are all paved with gold,
And w […]

We drove over the magic roundabout,
Elder sister Fliss, wife Trish and me,
As a few straggling fans made their desultory way
To the County Ground’s last game of the season,
Chesterfield and a one all draw; […]

Shakespeare walked into a pub,
The landlord was a card,
Shakespeare asked him for a pint,
The landlord said, “You’re Bard.”

4 old ladies, sleeping in the ward,
I wait for mum to wake; a bored
Doctor asks a nurse if Swindon
Are playing today.
She tells him, “Doncaster, away.”
Mum wakes up and I hold her hand,
Then Nora awakes and sob […]

Up early, just after dark,
Up with the dawn, Sunday morning lark;
My footsteps, the first in the frost,
I’m Jack, stepping out across
The white hoar football pitch –
And when I glance behind, such
A sight you n […]

I got my first red shift moment in 1960,
It was near Traitor’s Gate at the Tower of London,
When sister Fliss with husband Rod helped me peek behind the veil,
And I peopled my footsteps with the dead great and g […]

We swore sacred oaths,
Until base profanity
Brought foul victory.

“We’ll use the wheelchairs to make new tanks”
They laughed, “And the callipers
Will make nice new machine guns,
And your skulls will make fine footballs,
And we’ll melt you morons down
For tallow for candles […]

“Porrajimos”
Is what the Gypsies call the Holocaust,
And it came as no surprise
To experienced Gypsy eyes,
“ The Great Devouring”,
For Nazi racial ideology
With its delusory biology,
Had already said the only way […]

It’s so easy to forget us,
When remembering the Holocaust,
The wearers of the pink triangle;
But analysed from any angle,
We are the one in ten,
The women and the men,
Who find true love and trust
Within the c […]

Football and the Holocaust

THE BEAUTIFUL GAME

In the old days of my youth,
When I used to lie back in the dentist’s chair
Ater a medicinal whiff of gas,
With the drill resonating in my head,
And all manner of c […]

The idea that technology is ideological,
Is, in a sense, fundamental to Fascism;
The idea that technology is neutral,
Is, in a sense, fundamental to Liberalism.
So how interesting to see that fascist salute from […]

When I was burgled, I lost some self-confidence,
When I had my pocket picked, I lost all my self-confidence,
I no longer took things naturally for granted,
I saw danger where once I saw self-expression.
So it is […]

In a way, I couldn’t be bothered to put pen to paper,
It didn’t seem right to write:
All those bleeding heart Guardian letter page liberals,
All that competitive outpouring of sympathy
And right-on con […]

Frost in the fields,
Snow in the car park,
You, fighting for breath,
Me, fighting the tears,
Sitting on the bench,
Half-wanting the full time whistle.
But, mum, do you remember Wembley, 1969,
When dad left in the […]

Christmas 1914

It came upon a midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
And the angels bent down to the earth,
And the machine guns changed into harps,
And the leaden bullets turned into golden carols
That […]

If in the Spanish Civil War,
The British Govenment had helped the Left
Against Generalissimo Franco,
Then there would have been no
Scenes like Wednesday night,
The generational consequence
Of forty years of […]

I don’t find it tragic,
Or remotely comic,
That Socratic logic
Leads to Garforth Town.
It’s heroic,
It’s the World Turmed Upside Down.