I met a cannoneer with sunken eyes
Who said: Two vast and glassless rims of stone
Stand in north London. In their shadow lies
A battered puffer-jacket, cursed and thrown
Aside, as yet another season flies
Athwart the sun, then melts, then falls, then sags
In baffled error. Cruel were those springs
That tore the hearts from Arsenal’s likely lads.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Arsène Wenger, king of kings:
I did not see the incident! Despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Except: Pat Rice,
Still placing training cones in futile squares;
And Gunnersaurus, teeth pulled, chasing mice.
Andrew Thomas edits Twisted Blood and can be found on Twitter here.
Read More: Arsenal, Arsène Wenger, Middlebrow Avant-Garde Poetry
by Andrew Thomas · May 11, 2011
Well done. Tottenham supporter?
Love the Middlebrow Avant-Garde Poetry tag. Love Twisted Blood. Lovely.
Ah, you got my hopes up. From the title I thought this was about Johnny Giles. Now leave poor Arsène alone!
Got my hopes up too, I thought it would be about the legend that is Gilles Grimandi! Oh well, good poem. Didn’t cheer me up about arsenal though…
Ok. Why on earth do you have two inverted pyramids and of course the ‘eye’ as your choice for formatting the title and author of this piece. I don’t understand.
@Mash The eye is a reference to my links with the Freemasons. The pyramids are a sly wink toward Jonathan Wilson, who has a tattoo of Gilles Grimandi on his inner-left thigh. He doesn’t like to talk about it.
Based on ‘Ozymandias’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley, a fine re-make.
@Mash I was going to say, “the eye-pyramids refer to a strain of late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century orientalist exoticism that Shelley’s poem also draws from.” But then I realized that there’s no way you could fit all that on Jonathan Wilson’s thigh.
Astonished by how good this was!
You ticked all my boxes with this one.
No mention of the Romford Pele though? You could do a nice line about Ray Parlour as Prometheus, stealing fire (ball skills) from Mt Olympus (The Continent) and being chained to a rock and having his liver torn out for his troubles (West Ham).
Bravo, bravo.
“And I beheld a pale striker, and his name was Bendtner, and Hell followed close behind…”
April is the cruellest month.
@Benderinho Parlour makes me think of Keats (well, not usually, that would be weird, but just this once):
Anon rush’d by the bright Parlourion;
His flaming locks stream’d out beyond his heels,
And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire,
That scared away the meek ethereal Spurs
And made the Manc wings tremble. On he flared …
Holy crap! I only just learned about “Ozymandias” yesterday! Freaky…
Perhaps Andrew and I share some primordial bond–Andrew, are you a Red Sox fan?
This one could run and run:
“I wander’d lonely as a Malouda […]”,
“Half a Champions League, half a Champions League […]”
“If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on UNICEF […]”
“Bring me my snood of burning gold […]
“God save thee, ancient Mario,
From the fiends that plague thee thus!—
Why look’st thou so?”—”With my darts
I shot the youth team.”
(Sorry, but I did say it could run and run)
Nice piece.
To Arsenal fans, though, it feels more like Coleridge.
Doomed to tell the same tale every season (once we had a team so mighty that no one could defeat it–until we shot the Albatross) with the same sad results (we can win our way with only our players, I swear).
Given the recent the discussion of “hyper-partisanship” I will try to avoid being an “idiot”. But, what is this pile of crap? By what measure do you knock The Arsenal or Mr Wenger? At this point personal insult and speculative criticism is all I can muster so I will just leave it there.
Jog on.
@Iamanoaktree: Let’s see, failing to finish above 3d for six years running, perhaps? Or maybe failing to buy a center half better than Squillaci, not teaching players how to mark at set pieces, and lacking an attacking plan B when Nasri et al started to run out of gas in March and April. Above all: the draws with (in order) Newcastle, Sunderland, West Brom, Blackburn, Liverpool, and Tottenham that cost Arsenal the best chance we’ve had for a title in years.
Or was that a rhetorical question?
@Iamanoaktree where ever your partisanship regarding “the” arsenal may lay, surely this is not a “pile of crap.” is ours not a free society, in which all men may choose freely how and why they define success? if you are indeed an oak tree, should that not make you a supporter, or perhaps even founder, of “the” hearts of oak?
@Andrew Nice.
@dgm Shhhhhhhhh. My interest in Ghanaian footy would be minimal at best. Youre just typing to hear the clicks.
@M Massive delay apologies there. To focus on the negative is easy, Im not giving AW a pass on what would seem a bit of stubborness and not just belief in a good bunch of young players. The short comings are relatively obvious. But, having been a fan long enough to be able to step back and see the breadth of his work and not a victim of the myopic “what have you done for me lately” mentality of yourself and your like, I dont find it necessary to criticise, whether with “poetry” or prose.
I am a SUPPORTER.
A supporter of a fantastic club with an amazing history, a brilliant philosophy both on and off the pitch and a very bright future. Part of that is to take the good with the bad. Honestly it makes it more enjoyable in my opinion.
Yes, when the trophies come, again, they will be wonderful(and they will), yes I would have loved the boys to have had the bottle to make this year the one, but, to point out the problems every week and whine doesnt help anyone. You choose to be a part of it. Maybe you should choose to be a Chelsea fan? Your opinion isnt original or unique, its rather the rhetoric of the whole of the media. Thats just boring.
When they do come right you will wear your shirt with pride and forget about this little while. Wenger will be a genius again, The Gunners will be the greatest, and you will always have had faith in them. Well done. Ask a City fan or a Brum fan about waiting. 6 years pales in comparison.
In regards to the points dropped; unacceptable, other than Toon. That was a fecking conspiracy. There were actually betting anomolies, and that disaster of a “referee” Phil Dowd was investigated.
@Iamanoaktree, I’m not actually sure what to say at this point. You clearly have a picture of who I am and what kind of fan I am in your head, and your argument, however cogent as applied to that person, works somewhat less well when applied to me.
There are lots of things in your post I could argue with, but there’s one big point that’s more important. You have a very particular model of what it means to be a football supporter, one that’s more about accentuating the positive and trying to stay away from frustration and criticism. I don’t think that’s the only way to be. Being a supporter, as I see it, means that you care about the club and how they do; it doesn’t mean you have to pretend to be Pollyanna. (I can only imagine what you make of Pete Gill’s take on Arsenal!). I wouldn’t be so frustrated with how this season has gone if I didn’t care.
One final thought: if your gut reaction to the 4-4 with Newcastle is to hint darkly about match-rigging, go read Brian’s post about hyperpartisanship again, seriously.
@Iamanoaktree You might also want to have a look at Declan Hill’s “The Fix”, in which he describes how fixed matches generally work, and what they generally tend to look like. Not to spoil the ending for you, but the answer is typically: nothing like that 4-4.
@M I do have a preconception of you as a fan, thats true. I wonder how far off I am really.
The Toon bit was a joke son. The Youtube clip fella spoke of a conspiracy and given the spot kicks awarded it did seem to be a bit much even for Mr Dowd, who, in my opinion, seems to often give a PK in an Arsenal match. He was investigated for the match, and there were betting anomolies, thats the FA or Uefa not me. That said, I believe the Prem is the best league in the land and would be thoroughly put off if match fixing was actually the answer.
As to “Pollyanna”…? That doesnt seem, to me, to be a reasonable take on my opinion, and reinforces my take on you. I think that, the fact that, Arsenal could win the league or finish 5th next season is amazing. Sport is a distraction, I like my distractions to be worth while and multi-dimensional. The Invincibles season(you probably didnt see it) was amazing because of what it was, but, if that was every year I wouldnt show up the same way. Does watching some of the results make me want to go mad, absolutely, but making and breaking my weekend mornings is what its about. How can you criticize them for not winning? Its a part of everything you experience as a human, disappointment or hopefully, happiness. Im going to go out on a limb here and say you arent a ticket holder and there fore the actual cost of supporting the team is based on your cable/internet bill or perhaps a few pints. This removes any real attachment to club finance you could have beyond as a fan moaning about not doing what YOU would do with all YOUR money. Its not as if they are a weak side.
I appreciate the position The Arsenal hold in football. A modern “Big” club that dont tick all the boxes of “Big clubness”. Look at the clubs history. Arsenal have never been a world beating team. They have had great highes, tempered lows. It makes for excellent fandom.
So to get to Fulham Rd what you want to do is head South on Hornsey…….
@Iamanoaktree It’s poetry, and by all measures Wenger is a figure ripe for parody.