Tottenham away is a cracker . . . We're the Chelsea boys . . . Harris nutting a big cunt between the eyes . . . and a few of the blokes start kicking him in the head and gut, driving him under a parked car . . . and I'm in there feeling the sheer joy of kicking a deserving bastard in the bollocks, head, gut, anywhere . . . The rush is there and my body tingles . . . It's better than shafting a bird. Better than speeding . . . This is what life's all about. Spurs away. Love it.
No angel jingle herein fact who took the who out of hooligan?
& no bum rush, home or away they’d parked the car
(said Stee'va, eeze only a fren'lie, don' worr'ie my fren' yust a fuckin fren'lie)1
Da' boys have seen the present and know it does not work2(urp)
. . . effing and blinding throughout3
Bollocks’ own, life’s all about bird’s eye view: Nothing deserved to live!
Contains bottle Chelski nuts4sheer joy shafted & spurred away
That driver’s some conniver, all sped up on a class action cracker
1.Yrs truly, So Got Schooled: In the Tower, On the Field (three memoirs), p. 10.
2.Hugh MacDonald, Glasgow Herald, review of The Football Factory: “[A] group of Londoners who have seen the present.”
3.Review in Blah Blah Blah: “The most savagely authentic account of football hooliganism ever seen. The book’s veins pulse with testosterone and bellicose rage, effing and blinding throughout the warzone of macho culture.”
4.AKA Chel$ki, Chel’scum, etc.; “to bottle” is to choke under pressure.
Stephen Bett is a widely and internationally published Canadian poet with 23 books and 6 chapbooks in print from Blazevox Books, Chax Press, Ekstasis Editions, Spuyten Duyvil, Thistledown Press, and several others. His work has also appeared as an e-book (Argotist, United Kingdom) and in well over 200 literary journals in Canada, the U.S., England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Croatia, Finland, and Turkey, as well as in eight anthologies, on radio, and on YouTube. His personal papers are archived for scholarly use at Simon Fraser University Library’s Contemporary Literature Collection. His website is stephenbett.com.