Football Poets

The midnight hour.

And so the midnight hour
Approached and sleep
Crept over the London Stadium
The yawning, hooting
Nocturnal owl
May well have been heard
In some distant corner
Of Stratford with
Claret and blue feathers
With an FA Cup rosette
And rattle cheering from
The rafters
Come on you Irons
You can hear it calling
It might have been in
The stars
Fated to happen
West Ham through to
The last eight
Of the Cup always
Full of human kindness
Bees of Brentford
Lose their initial sting
After Jarrod Bowen strikes
Again and again
Double your money
Hit that jackpot
Bees deprived of their honeypot
Against Irons hammering
On the door of the
FA Cup quarter finals
For a while chaos and bedlam
Reigned over East End skies
A basketball match had arrived
On Olympic territory
Now that sounded just right
Wild, end to end, fun packed
The ebb and flow of a classic
London derby, authentic
Borrowed from the cigarette card
Era of heavenly wing wizardry
Finney and Mortensen,
Matthews and 1953
That was a Cup Final to roll
Around the tongue like a Chardonnay
Sheer perfection
But last night the Cup cranked up
The volume, donned its finest
Tuxedo and tails
And football re-discovered
Its most magical voices
From the past
West Ham and Brentford
Going toe to toe
Hammer and tongs
Breathless vapours
In the air
No time to catch your breath
Jarrod slips in the opener
Bees still buzzing but
Never really sure of their bearings
Equaliser, in no time
But alas this was not to be
Their night
Breaking into the safe
Of Hammers fragility at the
Back, once again
West Ham are brittle
Brentford, still directly
In the faces of claret and blue
Attacking assaults
All square for a moment
But then Traore bundled to
The ground like a man being
Chased by the local bobbies
But Adama is innocent, governor
Penalty struck home emphatically
West Ham ahead
Then the second half dawns
And yet more fun and frolics
Relentless madness ensues
Nothing between London’s
East and West pendulum
Swinging one way then the other
You attack, we attack,
The FA Cup, we can never
Get enough of it.
It was rather like the heyday
Of its historic ancestry
When giant killers downed
The stately home aristos
But then as most of us
Were contemplating our
Late night Horlicks
And then promptly to bed
Brentford pop out
Of the cupboard
And level the game again
Before extra time looms
Over the East End
Yet more emotional minefields
No more goals
Hearts beating like trip hammers
Penalties five each
Close your eyes now
Nerves in ragged tatters
West Ham drive home
The decisive winner
From six yards
Leeds in the last eight
Pulsating stuff
If only the FA Cup could
Always be like this

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