Now that history’s being abolished
like accountability and reasonable doubt,
what is it you want me
to worry about?

Like everyone older than Sizewell ‘B’,
I am running out of energy.
Only the other night I dropped off
during Match of the Day.

When I woke,
Chelsea were three down
to Leeds United.
And I’d missed all of them

Just like Germans
and the Treaty of Versailles,
we too have bad memories
of penalties.

Call me sentimental.
Call me rebarbative.
Call me Isabelle
if it makes you feel any better.

You speak your truth
and I’ll speak mine;
that way both of us will be
in two minds.

What counts, it seems,
is not what you do,
but what you say you did
and who you say it to.

Nowadays, it pays
to be immersive,
inclusive and global,
not subversive.

Cranks turn on chance
events, ignorance and ideals.
From which end of the bridge
over troubled waters

is the next mad bastard coming?

Jim Greenhalf grew up in east London and worked nearly 40 years for Bradford’s Telegraph & Argus newspaper. He lives in Saltaire and has written several collections of poetry including the above poem from Cromwell’s Head, Smokestack Books, 2023.