Football Poets

Football is back again

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 So here we are
Back on page one
The opening chapters
Football is back
From its restful
Summer vacations
At times it felt
As if the Beautiful Game
Had never been away
Swallowed up in
Excessive consumption
There were Club World Cups
The ladies once again
Euro champions
Obsessive, compulsive
Unrelenting, no time
To breathe, think, cogitate
Reflecting on last season’s
Epic exploits
When Liverpool romped away
With the Premier League
So art nouveau, decorative
One touch football
Cody Gapko and Mo Salah
Show stopping exhibitionists
And last night the Reds
Were all systems go again
Firing on all cylinders
Against the Cherries
Of Bournemouth,
Liverpool spit out the pips
And find their orchard of goals
4-2 on day one
Friday night festivals
Full of late summer sweetness
Never in doubt
A warning laced with threat
To the rest of the big boys
A shot across the bow
Anfield, always animated
And rarely agitated
But, shockingly, football
Took the darkest steps
Back into the evil shadows
Of unforgivable racism
It should have been a night
Of sombre recollections
As the late and great
Diego Jota
Who sadly passed
Only too painfully recently
Memories of his sainted life
Outrageously insulted
What on earth was that all about?
Leave those sounds in
The primeval swamps of yesteryear
Amid the dank chambers of
Idiotic ignorance where they belong
1970s chip paper
But let’s concentrate on August
Overtures and sonatas
That classical first sentence
Of the season
When every ground
Across the Football League pyramid
Resembles snooker’s finest green baize
Tables of lavish banquets
Time to gorge on goals
Not a blade of grass out of place
It’s that level playing field
Everybody off the starting blocks
Raring to go
It is just the opening day
No advantage or disadvantage
Simply Arne Slot’s
Premier League champions
Dashing and debonair
Dapper and distinguished looking
Up and running again
Bellowing at the top
Of voices,
Loud and proud
Still never walking alone
The Kop at the top of their
Endless game of pure
And puritanical football
But please no more repetitions
Of last night’s beastly
Throwbacks of football’s ancient
Acoustics when
Football fell into the
Fiery pits of hell
Of violence and villainy
Instead, let’s concentrate
On the virtues
And virility of the game’s
Masculine and feminine charms
Liverpool off the mark
With three points
Something to treasure
Again and again

9