Football Poets

Oh woe West Ham!

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Oh woe West Ham
It feels like sackcloth and ashes
Fond childhood reminiscences
Of eating what looked like
Wood shavings or the pencil
Sharpener remnants for breakfast
Doctor insisted you were lacking in
Fibre, roughage young man
That’s what you need
A sharp injection of healthy
Starters for the day
I kid you not
At the moment claret and blue
Clothes are tattered and threadbare
Today battered in Brighton
Thumped, pounded into the ground
West Ham humiliated by seaside
Strollers along broken,
Cracked East End pavements
Today chronic indigestion
At the Amex, bloated by
Another grim diet of four goals
Against as opposed to four
In the right net against Forest
It all feels like those relegation
Bound seasons before
Sentences are passed by revered
Judges in grey wigs
Send them down to their miserably
Dark police cell
West Ham guilty of self inflicted
Crime amid sorrowful
Court proceedings
It almost feels like deja vu
For hung over Hammers
Driven unceremoniously out of
The FA Cup by Manchester United
Now swept out across relentless
South Coast waves, no more
Than passengers at Brighton and Hove Albion
Sea sickness sets in with
A vengeance
Marooned in the Med
Hammers pummelled and thrashed
4-0.
It reminds you of that season
When in the last year of academia
School friends huddled conspiratorially
By Upton Park’s very intimate corner
Of South Bank discourse
West Ham face Liverpool in last
Game of the season late 1970s
Age of punk rebellion
They all believed the claret
And blue collective were going down
To the old Second Division
How right they were
How small you felt
Relegation for the first time
For almost 20 years
Since Ted Fenton returned
His 1958 brood back to the top
Flight to fight without fright
With the big boys in the playground
But now David Moyes
Has nowhere to go
Seemingly resigned to his fate
Oh how good it was at Upton Park
The light show of glistening fags
For the second half
In the bleak, dark wintry nights
Of Saturday afternoon
The Chicken Run in full melody
Sweet as the cider and lager
Of victory
Green Street ablaze with amber
Street lights, cockles, whelks
And eels stimulating greater
Appetites for more of the same
But now only the repulsive smell
Of manure and compost,
Yet more helpings of the
Championship
The London Stadium hosting
Championship football
It feels like iron filings
Industrial drudgery
For the West Ham faithful
Stratford welcomes Millwall
Again and again,
How degrading that sounds
But maybe this is a blessing
In disguise
Who needs those multi millionaire
Show offs, those pampered egos
Premier League
Who needs its high and mighty
Haughtiness, its total disregard
Of the rest of football’s
Neglected and discarded names
From the past.
The class divide that once
Left Barrow and Workington
In football’s derelict wastelands
Old rags and rubbish
In its dejected dustbins
For now though
West Ham clinging onto
Premier League status
For dear life
Normality across most
Seasons, after two top 10 finishes
But keep the faith
Those ironworks and foundries
May yet prosper for ever
One day perhaps
Come on you Irons
Just a little coaxing
Encouragement, that
Support must never fade
In adversity must come
Triumph. It will be.

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