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 condemnation of western culture; Debates about the existence of God, The inexorable might of Nature, And the wonders of a goat […]

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 last minute, When Gould equalised for Arsenal? And look what happened in extra time – We walked […]

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 drifted across no man’s land, On an otherwise silent but holy night, And all was clear and all […]

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 Fascism and racism And legitimised hatred.

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.