A World Cup Poem

There'll be teams from Europe, Down Under,
Squads repping both Asia and North America
The best from South America and Africa
So where feck is Antarctica!?!!

Honduras are there, hoping to dance
Bosnia have made it, so even have France
But the Anti-football massif?
Not a chance.

Snow joke to be left out of this fun
How many even thought of this side, I'd wager none
Instead twas jobs for the boys, where no-one wins
No 5-aside with Empire Penguins
Unless hell also freezes over, no frosted grins

How about a haiku?

Three shining lions
Yearning for (a) winter joy
To sugar the loaf

Three Lions on Our Shirt
So Good they used it twice
Whatever happened to David Baddiel
Or Steve Howey

England are off to Brazil
To play in the World Cup.
Am I bothered?

(#properhaiku)

Actually, Knecht, I'm not so sure (although of course it depends on which conventions you decide to adopt).

I went for trad Japanese with a 5-7-5 structure including sensory imagery and a juxtaposition which may not be inherently obvious and yours is noticeably different in every respect.

Olde skool, that's me (although I did struggle with caesura).

Sir Francis Drake wrote:

Actually, Knecht, I'm not so sure (although of course it depends on which conventions you decide to adopt).

I went for trad Japanese with a 5-7-5 structure including sensory imagery and a juxtaposition which may not be inherently obvious and yours is noticeably different in every respect.

Olde skool, that's me (although I did struggle with caesura).

Count the syllables, laddie! What bloody school did you go to?

There was an old fella called knecht
who's poetry was regularly inept
in his world cup ditty
He got rather shitty
because he din't get his syllables correct.

There was an old geeza called Fran
His poems were a measure of the man
he said bothered was one few
syllables not three but two
Proving himself a superior genus pan

England are off to Brazil (7)
To play in the World Cup. (6)
Am I bothered? (4)

Not 5-7-5 though, "off" could pass muster as sensory imagery but England/Brazil is a little too obvious as a juxtapostion. And nothing seasonal.

Could do better.

A limerick?

There is an old Scouser named Stevie
Who finds captaining England quite easy
But when all's said and done
And we haven't won
Gascoigne's tears will still reign in our memories

Free verse?

I love World Cups.
I love the pointlessness of much of the qualifying stages and the
Anticipation
That each tournament brings even though our team isn't
Very good and won't
Win it.

I love the way that unexpected heroes emerge from unexpected origins,
The inept referees and the blizzard of harsh
Yellow
Cards.

I don't like the bit where my team gets humiliated though.

Three shining lions  (5)
Yearning for winter joy  (6)
To sugar the loaf  (5)

I rest my case.

As for seasonal element - one of the most famous of the Master's (Basho) haiku:
Listen! A frog
Jumping into the stillness
Of an ancient pond!

Where's the seasonal element there?

ATD having an intellectual discussion about the structure of haiku! You never see that on pasoti. Truly ATD is the best football site in the world!

Blank verse?

It is with more hope than expectation
Of a success to be savoured, revered
By generations as yet unborn that
Hodgson's Lads, mostly artisans rather than artists, will journey

The redtops will celebrate the yellow tops
And be filled with nutty punchlines
Denuded of relevance and too obvious
For even a Brazilian to find satisfying or pleasingly punny

And through out it all we'll hope, dream, deceive
When deep in our hearts we already know that
Despite our Harty, yeomanic best intentions
We have a team that will find the heat too hot and samba too dancey

knecht wrote:

Three shining lions  (5)
Yearning for winter joy  (6)
To sugar the loaf  (5)

I rest my case.

As for seasonal element - one of the most famous of the Master's (Basho) haiku:
Listen! A frog
Jumping into the stillness
Of an ancient pond!

Where's the seasonal element there?

ATD having an intellectual discussion about the structure of haiku! You never see that on pasoti. Truly ATD is the best football site in the world!

Stunted sonnet
Football is like a cigarette -
the bigger the draw - the more you get.

Bugger. It was 7 but I re-wrote... Ahem. "a winter joy".

As for Basho: the joy of a haiku is that it shouldn't be too explicit as to exact meaning.

I'm guessing that "frog" may have some relevance in Japanese culture or that the implicit transition from tadpole to frog is a metaphor for the passage of time (and hence loosely alludes to the seasons) or the mere fact that the frog jumps into the pond means that it is not winter when the pond might be frozen and the frog wouldn't be daft enough to try it.

(BTW my blank verse doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Nothing like enough coherent structure or iambic penatameter but this is only a football messageboard - why do people want to discuss such things in such a place?)

Play nice you two!   

(Ps, I haven't got a clue what you are on about!) 

mouldyoldgoat wrote:

Play nice you two!   

(Ps, I haven't got a clue what you are on about!) 

There going to give ATD a bad name if they carry on like that.

EWs

England are shit
No doubt about it

^'Spect.^

Come on Woy,
Shake them up,
Like we did in '66.

That is a perfectly executed Haiku, it's a shame that it didn't stand up tithe literal translation from the little known Japanese dialect that I originally penned the piece in.

、Woyに来る
、それらを横に振る
のような私たちは、'66でやった。

knecht wrote:

、Woyに来る
、それらを横に振る
のような私たちは、'66でやった。

You haven't got ants in your keyboard have you knecht ?

i thought HAIKU was that new zealand rugger bugger dance thing   

Poverty and corruption in a beautiful land,
Millionaires exploiting the country,
Getting richer.
Does any of it matter?
Not to FIFA or to Blatter.