Football Poets

We used to play football on winter fields
on ice which hardly melted all the day long
by arches strung at a right angle to the Thames.

We used to play all summer long, or just a day
with tourists in Alexandra […]

If Shelley watched Scott McTominay
would his Naples dream have been of healing
even as the breeze from the Tyrrhenian
through holm oaks in the Villa Communale
reached an oriental plane?

Missing peace within […]

When you could walk all around the ground
we stretched the laws of the land
to the halfway line on the other side.

There we would stand by the segregation line
or mingle over half-time pies
like it’s a […]

If Cardiff played on the moon, that dragon
with a knot of fans would be there in support
soaring through lost atmosphere:
the valleys’ astronauts

And if one day the Milky Way
with Andromeda collides, […]

For simple food or a couple of drinks
make your way down to The Margam Deer.
Here a welcome awaits of an indifferent nod,
a distant smile that puts you at ease
with no rush and the pressure off.

You never […]

When you think back, games are framing devices
for otherwise lost days’ part-salvaged films
such as the one in late December ‘93 –
I’ll call it Black Country Mince Pies –
in a Sierra Sapphire up the M6
for […]

When he takes a long haul flight
through the sun’s dipped beams outlining grey,
when everyone sleeps he stays awake.

When others revise for future tests
or diverted minds shift between screens,
Erling takes […]

There’s a different kind of freedom
when you opt out in faded Berghaus,
not carrying much over the bridge
as a train rattles over the viaduct
between stubble fields, lighting its way
like the end of your roll […]

Black cushions of recycled Continental
are semi-volatile compounds
like the Sandhurst centre-back
channelling his week into a tackle.

In Tiempos, feel the rubber crumb
of zinc-enriched non-organic […]

After all that transpired: injuries, bereavements, heartaches,
relegation to No.3 before a transfer back to Cardiff Met:
crucial stops at critical times.

After everything you didn’t plan –
the sun behind a […]

Through rain drifting across floodlight beams
and smoke off the hotdog hut
from a corner by the Thames

you can see through black metal railings
through the smog and instant snap of fag ash
a distant heap […]

The day the leaflets came, election sludge
we slip into like a soft play ball park,
they promised us all a new start.

The current incumbent wouldn’t smile,
just said ‘It’s strange how all these missi […]

The first is the Hollywood, lofted
or hooked thirty yards from its target’s foot
over an advertising board for East Neuk Salt.

The second is the slide rule
from a vision barely peripheral –
a pitch for […]

‘Be quiet; the weather’s on the night news.’
Stephen Malkmus, Watery, Domestic

Cirrus never whispers, or was that Texas?
What you really meant was cumulonimbus
with deep grey future rain around its […]

On this island, is it Saints or Pompey,
what do you say? Don’t ask me, my friend;
I’m a Bournemouth fan from Alum Bay.

When you look north, from Cowes,
or east, from Ryde, I’m around the headland
at Chilt […]