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My Old Man’s a City Gent

Denys E. W. Jones

Tuesday, July 11th, 2006

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 “My Old Man’s a City Gent,
He wears a bowler hat.
He took me to the Stadium
To watch a Top Flight match.

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 The Exec Box was plush and posh,
The caviar first class.
The sandwiches replete with prawns,
The accents were cut-glass.”

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 “My Old Man’s a miner,
He wears a flat cloth cap.
He dragged me through the turnstile
To see a humdrum clash.

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 Our run-down Ground was not half-full,
The pitch devoid of grass.
The meat pies past their sell-by date,
The accents gruff and harsh.”

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 “My Old Man? He’s on the dole,
He hasn’t worked for years.
Can’t spare the cash to watch the match,
Or buy a pint of beer.

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 He gets his footie from the Box,
Slumped in a worn armchair.
He’s just another cast-off
From a land that does not care.”

7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 It’s like on the Titanic,
Up top you’ll find the Nobs.
The Middle Class cling to their tails,
And down below, the Yobs.

8 Leave a comment on verse 8 0 The wheat is screened off from the chaff,
The sheep cleft from the goats.
But when we hit the Iceberg,
Will there be enough lifeboats?

9 Leave a comment on verse 9 0 11/7/06
Denys E. W. Jones

© 11/7/06

Notes

A Marxist critic friend of mine suggested to me that Football Poetry is bourgeois buffoonery lacking in class consciousness. This re-working of Lonnie Donegan’s My Old Man’s a Dustman is my response.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/my-old-mans-a-city-gent/