"footballs" poems
We are, THE Ohio State Buckeyes
*Those Oregon ducks look flashy
With pretty feathers made for flight
But The Ohio State Buckeyes
We will clip their wings tonight
Our Buckeye team beat Bama
They were ranked at number one
Now we get to go Duck hunting
With Cardale and his shotgun
The Ducks they did look good
Lets give credit where credit's due
They beat undefeated Florida State
So they deserve to be there too
With Ezekiel Elliott making runs
And Urban Meyer making calls
A quarterback known as twelve guage
The Buckeyes will win it all
So now we get to go duck hunting
And as a team we hunt as one
We are the Buckeye Nation
And Duck Season has begun*
**We Are
THE Ohio State Buckeyes**
Game score
FINAL
OHIO STATE 42 Oregon 20
The Ohio State Buckeyes are College Footballs First Playoff National Champions
Poem by:
Carl Joseph Roberts
Jan 12, 2015
Jan 12, 2015 at 5:30 AM UTC
Folded pieces of paper.
Old past due assignments.
Made paper footballs with-
Corners pointed like diamonds.
Spent all that time.
Scooping out room for-
You in my heart.
Like guts of a pumpkin.
Stay close to you I tried.
But the pumpkin got rotten.
Corners got bent.
And my company unwanted.
A couple of cans of root beer.
Sitting along my windowsill.
Sitting still, lukewarm and flat.
Dragging in gnats.
I remade my bed.
Cleared off the pillows-
I pretended were you-
And made room for two.
I took down the pictures.
I took down the lights.
Took down some notes on-
How to resist my-
Need to be loved and-
My want to be fine.
My urge to move forward and-
Hunger to fight.
I get lost in the right-
Ideas and go wrong.
I hope that you don't think-
That I belong here.
Jun 5, 2014
Jun 5, 2014 at 1:07 PM UTC
baby I got hours of green
to edit, mondays goes dumb hard
like kicking kittens like footballs
leg day to finish myself off
to seal my confidence into the night
i hate days like these, rocky roads
and nowhere to hide from the sun
and the ugly, being assimilated into
the lifeless machine in a lifestyle-less queue
Jul 31, 2018
Jul 31, 2018 at 2:47 AM UTC
.
The oceans are dying,
Coral reefs are bleached,
Ghostly acidic in the seas,
Climate is changing, not for Nero,
But for subjects who wait in whirlwinds
Eye, underneath uncapped mountain peaks,
And water is draining underground. Where is
Reason, where is sense uncommon? Not with
Elected hands who are wringing to lords of zero,
Whose legions are sent off, engaged in foreign wars,
To scathe, faraway dramas brought back home,
Politicians squabble, as they reel, cashing in,
Seals of unapprovals, witness hollow, low rings,
Infrastructure crumbles, above our dry heads,
And Nero plays his fiddle, in a land of perky dead,
John Lennon said NYC was in reality the new
Rome, soon set to burn, in a decade or so,
Nero knows, Nero plays, could give a feck'
Humanity is Nero playing his fiery fiddle
There is only one issue of news that matters,
Not bread, or circus, Kardashians, or deflated
Footballs, it is our survival, the earth, heating up,
Is angry and we are small, deaf, blind and numb,
A mankind of fools with Nero playing his fiddle.
Jun 25, 2015
Jun 25, 2015 at 8:35 PM UTC
It’s the week before the Super Bowl,
where the Patriots and Sea hawks will meet,
and all that folks are talking about
is Bill and Tom’s softball deceit.
It’s cold up North this time of year
when the Patriots made their playoff run.
Snow and ice require gloves;
If footballs slip, they’d be undone.
“Taking the air out of the ball”
Once referred to the running game.
Deflated ***** are easy to grip
But it’s cheating, that much is plain.
It seems the ***** that Brady used
spiraled nicely through the rain.
When you ***** are small and soft,
Like Brady’s, it’s a different game.
When Tom was asked about the scheme
He laughed at first and wouldn’t tell.
The truth about Tom Brady’s *****
is closely guarded by Gisele.
Jan 24, 2015
Jan 24, 2015 at 10:33 AM UTC
You look best in my lamp light. Your belly scar
rough underneath my fingertips as I jump the scratch
and attach myself to your hips, kiss your pelvic bone
until even my teeth can taste your sweetness. I can feel
black kettles and the burn from the ironing board crash of 1999.
When we’re wrestling in my duvet covers, the shadows
cast your memories up like a sanctuary projection. I see red race cars,
your brother jumping on the couch, fishing bait kept
in your back pocket. Your lips taste like liquor but I hear nursery rhymes
from when you were little, wobbly, an over-all dream
in the yard seen through the kitchen window. I know,
that you’ve dressed yourself in bad dreams
and broke yourself over footballs and houses of green paper,
but you look best in my lamp light when my hands
cram your face into my palms, your blush dripping
from you cheeks. Because I see the way
you burrow yourself into my chest when you think
I’ve gone to sleep, and I’ve seen the way your foot catches
on the edge of the woodwork right before you fall.
Dec 28, 2014
Dec 28, 2014 at 11:30 PM UTC
I wish to see a world of my dreams
Full of rejoice and sunbeams
I wish to see the children
Not growing like weeds
But like flowers in the orchard of humanity
With adequate feeds
I wish to see the poor's children
Carrying books like me
Unlike their parents working in sun's steam
I wish to see the teens
With footballs rather than
Sweating in the farms with ploughs
I wish I could be the change
That this world of my dreams need
But alas! My friends this only happens
In my dreams .
Jan 22, 2017
Jan 22, 2017 at 12:21 PM UTC
Here I write some recipes,
From our anti--football league,
How to cook a football totally,
Must boil it for twelve hours, ritually,
Then you can dice it and fricassee,
Or maybe bake, broil, and grill,
What won't fatten, shall fill,
Or you can make mini-football custard, eh,
Chocolate footballs in a bowl, let's say,
We call it Footy Iles Flotante,
Star sweet in the anti-football restaurant!
Then a recipe for Grand Final Day, swell,
It's called footy Croquembouche Noel!
Hear the anti-footballers yell!
You, too, can write recipes,
For the Anti-football Society,
It's like dining at the Waldorf Astoria,
Anti-football recipes from Melbourne, Victoria!
Mar 31, 2017
Mar 31, 2017 at 3:37 PM UTC
I will wait here.
I will wait precisely in this cabinet,
Until you prise it open
In that delicate curiosity
That is lost in ‘today’.
My words are more patient than myself.
I know that now,
I think I always did.
It is why I love and
Why I love so patiently.
I will wait so gladly in my place,
Until poetry is fashion once more.
It is a sure case
In a sorry state.
Hearts that beat too fast
And breaths that are too frequently
Forsaken for a foolish enterprise
Of some invested individual
Sat watching behind a blast screen.
I will wait here and think back.
To remember the fuzzy nothing
Of my childhood mind. I recall little
But the polarities. The spaces of life
That intercede mere existence.
I bask in these doctored images of a past
That I never quite had. A fatherless summer
Forgotten instantly in garage top vigils,
Kicked footballs and years that were endless.
I wonder if my words will last longer
Than the etchings of your gravestone.
I wonder more so whether you would
Approve of them and how much I would
Have cared if you did not. A father is lost
And is abstract for me. Like God,
An ever-present utterance of nothing at all
Or perhaps everything that I am
Or could possibly ever be.
I wonder whether my love of words
Is nothing but a longing for permanence
In a world that has forever shown me
Futility. I have read of it in your name
Again and again through till now,
And thenceforth years to come. Your name,
How it needs to mean something,
Your voice, your ‘I’ through the ages,
For it envelops me within it - we are the same Mr.
It is within your void that I search for a father.
An ancestor to tell me who I am
And from where I have come. The plight of the
Ape-men that have been, their legacies
Wrought in blood-stained gold
But also in each yellowing poem
And from the hand prints on cave walls.
These are the will of my fathers,
The trinkets on my mantelpiece.
It is within you all that my words
Remain patient. It is within you all
That my will remains clear. For I know now
(Or perhaps I always did)
That there is a voice amongst us.
It may sleep through the noise of today,
All-talk and no communication. It may sleep
Right on through until we awake. Our eyes
Will burn for staring at the screens,
But our hearts will sing for their reprieve.
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 9:34 PM UTC
When I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I carry my homeland as if it were in my arms.
Remembering:
chairs made of wooden crates,
footballs made of newspapers,
cigarettes made of camel dung.
Someone once said: a best friend will help you move
and a best friend will help you move bodies
but if you have to move your best friend’s body,
you’re on your own.
When I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I think about how you and I
belonged where nothing belonged:
shimmering with heat waves Africa,
rainy season pounding the mabati roof Africa,
weaver birds weighing down acacia trees with their nests,
Africa. Where do we lay the blame and the bodies?
It could have been me holding the machete,
could have been me holding the machine gun.
Why is that?
When I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I see acts of courage and sacrifice that take my breath away.
A boy, shielding his sister's body with his own.
A girl, leading a blind woman to safety.
And you, holding an old man in your arms,
his life dripping down your clothes.
What I wished for you was a place where you would not fear
the terror by night, nor the arrow by day,
nor the plague that walks in the darkness,
nor the destruction that lays waste at noonday.
I wished for you the deep red sunsets over the vast hollow of the Chalbi desert,
the brother that reads to you in your break-bone fevers,
the camel that carries you and doesn't get tired.
When I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I wonder why I lived
and you didn’t.
And for your sake, and mine, and the world’s, and God’s,
I want to leave behind the failed resolve and the excuses
that keep me from leaving the world better than I found it.
When I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will learn
to fear no evil.
Feb 5, 2013
Feb 5, 2013 at 1:17 AM UTC
You stood tall
and blocked many
of life's footballs
for eighty odd years
You lived in many places
from Cairo to Barrow
until you came to live with lucky us
here in Windermere
I never saw you as a soldier
a lover of women and fun
It’s hard to see you shooting a gun
at anyone
I saw you as a gardener
toiling gently in the soil
You knew your birds and bees
and your flowers and your trees
You avoided the elevator
like the plague
I’m glad you left before
there were compromises
you would have to make
You still had most of your hair
and you preferred to take the stairs
Nov 25, 2022
Nov 25, 2022 at 4:02 AM UTC
you can find me where the thorns start to thrive,
in the long grass with the lost footballs of better years,
and childhood memories buried under
thistles and weeds.
you can find me where the path is grown over,
under the tree where a hundred boys and girls
who had once kissed eachother,
will never kiss again.
you can find me in the pawn shop,
among the wedding rings engraved
'I'm yours for eternity'.
Aug 19, 2013
Aug 19, 2013 at 3:46 AM UTC
.
The oceans are dying,
Coral reefs are bleached,
Ghostly acidic in the seas,
Climate is changing, not for Nero,
But for subjects who wait in whirlwinds
Eye, underneath uncapped mountain peaks,
And water is draining underground. Where is
Reason, where is sense uncommon? Not with
Elected hands who are wringing to lords of zero,
Whose legions are sent off, engaged in foreign wars,
To scathe, faraway dramas brought back home,
Politicians squabble, as they reel, cashing in,
Seals of unapprovals, witness hollow, low rings,
Infrastructure crumbles, above our dry heads,
And Nero plays his fiddle, in a land of perky dead,
John Lennon said NYC was in reality the new
Rome, soon set to burn, in a decade or so,
Nero knows, Nero plays, could give a feck'
Humanity is Nero playing his fiery fiddle
There is only one issue of news that matters,
Not bread, or circus, Kardashians, or deflated
Footballs, it is our survival, the earth, heating up,
Is angry and we are small, deaf, blind and numb,
A mankind of fools with Nero playing his fiddle.
Aug 26, 2017
Aug 26, 2017 at 6:07 PM UTC
Splinters, blisters.
Losers, winners.
Saints and sinners.
"Come in for dinner" s
It's where we learned to socialise.
Our very own sovereign land
zero politics
and conflicts always solved
hand to hand.
Loud junctions juxtaposed
against our little corner of paradise
motorists peering in when they stop at that red light.
Ringing on doorbells, buzzing on intercoms
The anticipation
to hear whether your friend was home or not.
Colourblind kids with the most vivid sight.
Retrieving footballs under parked cars
was the extent of our plights.
I didn't know where the world would take us
or the type of people it would make us,
but something I learned from a young age
is that the rest of the world isn't like
Gooseacre.
Jul 29, 2023
Jul 29, 2023 at 12:24 PM UTC
That day stands sharp in focus
Whenever it's called to mind;
A peaceful Sunday Morning,
just before the Harvest time.
They held a picnic benefit
Each year on public land
For the Widows and the Orphans
Of the firefighters clan
.
All gladly paid to enter
and bought chance books besides.
The old men brought their families
The young men brought their brides.
Bouncing on the rides and slides
erected for them here-
The children had the best of times
as their mothers hovered near.
The men were cooking barbecue,
Tossing footballs, drinking beers
You'd recognize their names-
because you hear them once a year.
The day was nearly cloudless
Seldom was the sky so blue.
Who knew so many would be lost
before that week was through.
Within two days too many here
were cut down in their prime.
Betrayed by poor equipment-
They could not escape in time.
But I, permitted to grow old,
remain to testify
about the courage of my friends-.
so that their memory never dies.
That day is sharp in focus
Whenever it's called to mind;
A peaceful Sunday Morning,
just before the Harvest time.
Jan 1, 2012
Jan 1, 2012 at 1:36 PM UTC
Today at exactly 4:07 p.m on September 2, 2014
On a perfect kind of weather tuesday
Standing in the press box, which is normally like an oven, but not today. The cool air filled the press box like it could snow or prince charming himself could come kiss you at any moment in the rain.
Filming people running around on a field catching footballs like bullets
I felt my heartbeat
It was pulled from way back on the selves of your heart where you can't seem to put an order to things because well, it leaves space but this time
This time you took the time to grab mine again and dusted it off for finger prints but you only found yours.
you text me to tell me, I wasn't the only one.
*T~
Sep 2, 2014
Sep 2, 2014 at 10:50 PM UTC
Plastic pistols, cowboy hats
action men, palitoy combat
Hotspur, Tiger and Hurricane
leather footballs, broken panes
Matchbox, Corgi, Airfix, Meccano
Stickle Bricks, and (only) red and white Lego
Triang scooters, Raleigh Choppers
Dunlop plimsolls, orange space-hoppers
Down the park’s obstacle course
Witches Hat, iron rocking horse
Bumps and scrapes, grazes and cuts
rub it all better, just-get-back-up
Home before dark, in time for tea
Billy and Ian, my sisters and me
Dec 13, 2021
Dec 13, 2021 at 2:26 PM UTC
The garden served little purpose
It sprawled across the bored ground, despondent beneath the yawning sun
My mother would wail her annual rage
At the snarling weeds that softly smothered the flowers
How I loved those flowers
Rejected footballs perplexed the lawn
Their obtuse hulks spoiling that ripple of green
I found a four leafed clover there once
He poked his obscure head above his brothers: a suicide mission to bring me luck
They are all dead now
I didn’t waste nearly enough time reclined on that jealous cushion
Watching the lethargic clouds wobble on
But most otiose of all in that seldom wandered paradise was the Wall
That Wall was never high enough
I see it from my back door
Squat, depressed, sighing, each dusty clot of red brick seems so lifeless
Doomed to live out the rest of its days as a failure
All flung ***** that compress their rubbery bodies against it will soon vault over
It crudely bookends the busily neat hedge
Simply because that is where the drunken soil runs out
It fails too at its chief instruction:
Be the purgatory bridge between Our heaven and Their hell
But the Wall was never high enough
I remember the other side of the Wall
How I crouched in filth
Needless to be afraid of a cut from a single blade of grass
Impoverished chickens clucked in the squalor
How they survived such malnourishment awed me
The friends I thought I had there cheated me
And I ran from that disastrous place
Where chaos twisted the agonised branches of the hedge we shared
But it followed me like an age old Gypsy curse
Even today, a writhing, mewing splodge of night will sit on the Wall
Looking too fat for its own fur coat
It will viciously attack the thin air for a while
Perhaps accept a stroke but, seeing no morsel, wander home
But I am not spared
For I can see its wasteland kingdom from my window
It is not an evil place
But the Wall was never high enough
Apr 24, 2013
Apr 24, 2013 at 4:04 PM UTC
Letter Box: ‘Why does nobody comes this way’?
Me: ‘Maybe, they prefer an email’?
Letter Box: ‘Really? That means I am no more needed’.
Me: Not really! Maybe, they need you for registered posts only.’
Letter Box: ‘Well, what is an email’?
Me: ‘It is an electronic message that is instant moving from one gadget to another’.
Letter Box: ‘Oh, so it is faster than me. It is instant that is why I am discarded.’
Me:’ You are not discarded. You are just less used these days’.
Letter Box: ‘It is instant and faster but can one feel the touch of the paper? Can a mother touch the words written by her son and feel the warmth of his affection? Can a father embrace the letters drenched in his daughter’s tear who is miles away? Can all this be possible in an email’?
Me: ‘No, not at all. But you know what the world has changed now. And maybe, you did not notice. There are more people on gadgets than in the garden, where you are place’.
Letter Box: ‘I know as there are no footballs that hit me anymore. There is no one who looks at me – waiting for that one letter eagerly. They just pass by me – as if I do not exist. Oh, it hurts, it really hurts so much’!
Me: ‘You are still needed, and that is why you are still here.’
Letter Box: ‘Maybe, but still I wait for that football to hit me, and that postman to unlock. I still wait’!
Jun 25, 2019
Jun 25, 2019 at 7:35 AM UTC
I marry you in the playground.
This limitless concrete jungle, a place where wars break, houses are made and tea is served now hosts a grander event.
Spring blossoming hedgerows arch over head framing our glee, we stand together.
Resplendent in sweatshirt, Teflon and scuffed Clarks, your gingham has never looked so glorious, and I feel under-dressed and overwhelmed next to your face. The one that every mother could love.
Presided over by a select few and away from prying eyes, boisterous scuffles over footballs and teachers who just wouldn’t, couldn’t get our love.
Our diamonds and sapphires might be gelatine and e-numbers, but this commitment is delicious. As sweet and sticky as the hold you have over me.
I take your hand in mine and run for the boundaries.
Oct 31, 2013
Oct 31, 2013 at 6:16 PM UTC
Fall is falling
On summer
Cool breezes
Are calling
Consider
This a sign
Of autumn's
Kisses bitter
September looms
Footballs kicked
Crops yielded
Harvest moons
Leaves color
Children learn
Transition
Like no other
Cool winds
Are swarming
Fall is falling
Life is turning
Aug 13, 2013
Aug 13, 2013 at 6:32 PM UTC
The puppy seemed happy to see me
when I seen her at the park that other day.
you coulda seen it right away.
So the shrink lady she say, so what?
Dunnno, jisayin' somebody seemed happy
after seeing me naked paraded before all
who may have noticed,
maybe not.
What if nobody noticed and I am happily
seen a naked thing I am
unnoticeable save for seekers of knowns
believed to be known or
knowable
by you, down in the slew, Bunyan's slough,
ya got iron in yer blood?
ya areckon.
Yer Uncle Sam needs ya, boy,
you leave that Kansas lass to
stare at those July buttermilk skies,
there's a war awaitin' for Rough Riders,
Arizona reared and steered
Say what, sir? Steered? Not me. Done my time.
Played footballs, by damtotell, at Fort Bliss,
I threw hand grenades,
Football was Ft. Huachuca, autumn, 1967
Bien Hoa was in the spring, one day after
My Lai, my country's legacy from my year
beyond the whole idea of war. History said,
if we are not the Redcoats, we are the Hessians,
at least.
Allegiance to a legion because they are many?
Perish the thought.
Nov 6, 2018
Nov 6, 2018 at 7:17 PM UTC
When the time comes...
I want a large festival named after Mark Twain,
I want the streets to be cloaked in color,
I want peopleto ride in on horseback lightsaber in hand,
I want the wind to be whispering the best puns the world has to offer to the trees,
So that trees can laugh, giggle, snicker, and chortle with fluffy forest friends,
I want music of every kind playing across the living mountains and through the clouds and rain I envy,
I want it to rain so hard that persons of all shapes and sizes are forced to take off their heavy drenched clothes and just dance in their underwear, playing with glow-in-the-dark footballs with Lionel,
I want absolutely no lights,
I want the ugliest girl in the world to appear to be the most beautiful under the sun of the night,
I want everyone to come only by bicycle, skateboard, foot and any other non-mechanical way,
Not for the earth but because i don't like the sound smell of look,
But most of all...
I want to leave a legacy,
Not a huge one, just big enough to live forever...
In the back of one's mind,
Jan 16, 2015
Jan 16, 2015 at 8:03 PM UTC