Sometimes I write poems and sometimes I don’t
It depends what I’m writing and whether I will or I won’t.

Poetry is the medium of those truly inspired. Those who are on another plane of love and appreciation and wonderment, for whom mere words are insufficient to express what their hearts are truly feeling.

Which is why I never read poetry. What’s the fucking point? It’s pretentious, often pretty meaningless, vague and opaque by design, cryptic and… I could go on. Do I really want to know what is buried deep in someone else’s heart?

Shakespeare wrote in rhymes. And he was a Spurs fan. Big time. So, like the ‘other’ bard, I write in poetry when moved beyond the scope of what normal sentences can possibly hope to express.

So I only do it for football. I could extend it to the mountains, except we ‘don’t got none round ‘ere’, or to flowers, birds, all of God’s majesty, the sunset, the stars, all host of really boring, dull things. Yet its only football that inspires me to wax poetic. Even though ‘rhyming couplets’ are arguably the cheapest form of verse. The easiest. Birthday Card Poetry. Lila can do it. Though, as you can see from this picture, biting into an apple would be more of a challenge for her currently.

Football simply lends itself to verse. But only if certain criteria are met, so that an emotional ‘critical mass’ causes an inner nuclear ‘explosion’ (body cells do have nuclei, so its appropriate) of wonder, awe and love.

So first of all; there’s the ‘importance’ of the match. Ok, none are unimportant, but winning against, f’rinstance Ipswich (as fucking IFFFFF), would not be as exiting as a win against, say, Manchester City. To make the mighty fall is a biblical thing. The magnitude of the win is massively relevant. I’ll take one nil, against any team, any day. But when the number creeps up to, say, 4!!! The realms of ‘thrashing’, or ‘drubbing’, then it gets really poetic. Yet its about the boys. And when they, man for man, simply outclass their outrageously overpaid and ‘rock star’ opposition; when Dejan Kulusevsky outplays Gundogan, Kevin De Bruyne and Phil Foden all together, and James Madison outshines Erling Haaland in front of goal, and our make-shift centrebacks keep a clean sheet, and our goalie is spectacular… Then I get inspired. More than inspired; I feel the need to… to… to make things rhyme. Just like Shakespeare.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx