Football Poets

The new football season

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Like excited families
Counting down the last
Days of the old year
Smiling and laughing
At the prospect of the New Year
The new football season
Is back again
Out with the past
Welcoming the future
Good riddance to taking
The knee,
Just to learn to live with
Each other
Just tolerance
Please, no
Racism anymore
Or maybe yes
Yet more prejudice
If that’s how you feel
In which case
Then we apologise
For the FA’s rashness
It wasn’t their fault
As usual
But this weekend
The Premier League
Starts up her engines
Checks the carburettor,
The oil and fuel
Of autumn, winter,
Spring and early summer
Football now
A permanent mechanism
That just keeps going
Like the relentless ding
Dong bell of Big Ben
On the hour like clockwork
Football
Spanning the cracking tap
Of the conker season in
Early September
Before taking flight
Into even more vinegary
Premier League rivalry
Winding, wending
Its laborious way
Through dark tunnels
Of uncertainty
Before the conclusive
And comprehensive finales
Of Spring and May
Twisting and turning to
The chilling and wintry
Pinnacles of the end of the
Year, when Suddenly
November loses its cymbals
And dramatic drums,
Violins stop weeping
Pianos gently
Tinkling away
In the background
Football
Resigned to its fate
Before the Premier League
Stops and grinds to
A temporary halt
Those final crotchets and quavers
Now no more than
An autumnal crackle of
The pub log fire
This year is World Cup
Year. But now switched
To a date more suited
To Santa Claus liking
Wrap your presents
Now. For the World
Cup Final is a week
Before Christmas Eve
Who knows
They may even appoint
Father Christmas as the
Referee for the World Cup Final
But the Premier League is back
This weekend
As opposed to Saturday
At three in the afternoon
Traditionalists stare into
Their pints of bitter with
Perhaps bitterness
That’s logical, is it not?
But the goal posts and crossbars
Wait patiently for our ludicrously rewarded
Icons and idols to line up
In outlandish costumes of technicolour
Rather like the early morning commuters
On well trodden railway platforms
And yet this is the start of a new football
Season. It’s set in stone, tablets of August
Stone,
Like a familiar uncle or much loved cousin
Football played on its customary
Green snooker baize, every blade of grass
Smoothed, bevelled, sculpted and
Beautifully manicured,
Like soldiers on parade
Lined together
Horizontal and vertical
Perfection
It’s the big kick off
Everybody
Manchester City back
At the London Stadium
Where a couple of seasons
Ago, a 5-0 hammering
Of the Hammers
Your team
Was more or less a loud
Tannoy announcement
We will win the Premier
League by Christmas
But throw those omens
Out of the window
There have to be claret
And blue textures
To savour on the opening day
Of those wonderful fixtures
You have to believe
So Pep, Jurgen, Mikel,
Thomas Tuchel,
Or quite possibly Manchester United
But surely under re-construction
A painstaking work in progress
Football returns
From its holiday
Recreational days
Now counting down the hours
Before World Cup
Combats
And the Premier League
Pauses for breath
In November abeyance
Though it’ll be back again
Football all the way
To the bank
And beyond

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