ARRAYED: poems on life and Chess 2024-2025 (32 poems)
MOUNTAINS
the mountains
are giant pieces
awaiting
their first
move
I think
they have defence up
their sleeve that will
nullify our opening
set a trap with poisoned pieces
that will lure us
to a
great fall
but we have moved but
no one sees it
news of
the push of a pawn
into the centre not
yet having
reached us
time seeming to move
so slowly
the game
taking forever
yet Black is thinking through
all possibilities
getting those mountains
off the back rank
volcanoes tsunami marshalled
with the gravity of
millennia
all
at the speed of light
****
SMOTHERED
smothered mate
Mr Bond
love of
Queen (now King)
and country
has
squashed you
into a corner
no man supposedly
an island but
you appear
to be a
tiny one
deluded by the believed
magnificence
of your
self-
importance
and now
to put it bluntly
you are
screwed, have
lost the game
and this
foreign, highbrow, villainous
post-atomic, cyber-
crime,
deformed
asexual, intellectual mutant
gloating at how
you took the Gambit, swallowed
the poisoned pawn
in one wrong move altered
geopolitics
and the nature
of Empire
and you
with your jaw
hewed from granite and
tinker-tailor brain
wondering if like
Admiral Horatio you too
will be
elevated above the laiety
on towering
plinth
or column
as the streets of old-time Motherland clucking
for
her lost
children
all smashed to chicken shit
beg you
to resign next move
before,
like a guillotine, it befalls,
becomes the
iconic moment captured
for all time
that now will change
everything
****
C & C LTD.
playing chess
making love
knights
forking everything
on on the board
I think Cheech and Chong
as in my grandmaster stupor
Chong
and Cheech
Chong
and Cheech
to know where I am endgaming
right now
need more
smoke and mirrors
don’t want to Robin Williams genie myself
into a series of explosive
moves
rebounding in
my face
need some of your C & C good stuff to
take
the edge off
my embarrassment
need to conserve, focus
direct
until in sight,
within
touch I do get
to light the fuse
Oh
let the joke not be too
much on me my darlings
cold fusion
supreme complement
contribution
ultimate solution
to needs and desires, desires
and needs
****
FINISHING TOUCH
I love
your
finishing
touch
coup de gras
in the corner,
on
the back rank
Mike Tyson
punch
(the one
all plans crumble in the face of)
****
COUNTER-GAMBIT
pert patterns
swings
and roundabouts
shuffles
for advantage, pressure
for position
until levee break
dyke broken, centre
folds
chain
snapped, bullied
into submission
shield wall
cracked open
the dam shattered, Barnes
Wallised into
full flood oblivion
Oh the tactics and strategies
of this unforgiving game
such that
you never see it coming
untl you
do
express mailed
down the highway
****
EVEN THEN
it took a lifetime
to get
the Muse of Chess
to surrender
here secrets
and even then,
so much in the dark and
light arts
of this game
remains to be known
has not
yet been seen
stuff she is keeping hidden
to reveal to her
future lovers
masters and mistresses
whose mastery
of the game
will always
put me to shame
****
AGAIN
I want to learn
everything there is
to learn
about chess
sit through the night
ploughimg the games
of Lasker, Capablanca,
Alekhine,
Tal, Kasparov
Fischer
learning them by rote
can recite them move
perfect in
glorious notation
not that will
ever help prevent
my blundering
my way
into defeat, time
and time
and time again.
****
PAWN
I am pawn
move forward
one
step at
a time
kill sideways
(am in this
true Roman legionary)
can move
two at the outset
of battle aa
Initial flourish
but die
like a fly
unless
ascend to backrank
Heaven, become
Cleopatra, become
Boudecia
****
PLAIN
Knights are sneaky customers
pull that L bend out of nowhete
suddenly
it’s a fork
suddenly its
somthered mate
chess trick question
knight must
be in
the answer somewhere
shifty guy
without which the game
do linear,
determinate, plain
****
ALL THE MOVES
we manoeuvred our
way across the board
and suddenly
we are iding across
the tiles
bedward bound
King and Queen
same opposite
building a palace in the sky
knowing
all the moves
****
MOVES
chess
sex
small
moves.
devastaing
consequences
your move
short and sweet
the board
spreadeagled
hope you are
about
your game
****
SUREFIRE DEFENCE
I must thank you
for teaching me chess
as I said, as
I told you i know
nothing about the game
have
never played
chess before
and so we played the
strip version
where every piece
I lost
I had to divest
myself, forfeit
some or other
item
of clothing
and so it was
you swept across the board
gobbling up my pawns
and devouring all
my larger pieces
until I was mated, naked
as a baby
long into the night
those victory celebrations
you not notcing
my bishops on
same colour diagonal
missing every
Knight fork, every
en passant
but
a bit of
a conflict of interest here
working on my own
and your own
grandmaster ratings
someday I must
teach you every
gambit
in the book;
every surefire defence
GOODNIGHT MOVES
a game
of structure
and sequence, could
not be more linear
but everymove
of yours
ends up
in checkmate
those knights
working hand in glove
with their
Queen;
Lancelot-Guinevere
complicity in everything
L there
not for
“love”
certainly not
for “learner”
and me
with the foresight
of a pawn
watching front,
back and centre
overlooking
the diagonals
outflanked, double
enveloped
shanked
in the rear
your game a brutal
thing of beauty
seemingly all
of the cuff but
some inner mathematics
lies at
the heart of
such execution tapidly realised
planning (you
could figure
it out
naked
could play it blindfold)
and me
back in my box
my crypt of a crib
such great
goodnight that’s all
see you
in another life moves
hit
queenside, kingside, by
file, by rank
mastermind mistress
at the heart
of everything
pulling all the strings
dominating ftom
the centre (and
oh
what
a centre!)
every opening in
the book
sheer innuendo!
what
ecstasy to
one day
win
when every
loss such a pleasure.
MAGNANIMOUS
I do not
see pieces
I see
force fields
I see
the route
these patterns take
the routes
they transcribe
and in
that great history
and mythology
I detect
a mechanism
at the heart of all
in this sixty-
four square space
and the spaces
that surround
everything that quietly
expresses analogy, screams
out metaphor
Garry Kaspi K
wrote on
the game as the lesson
life can
learn from
you, bonny Mikhail Tal,
and the Fischer King
but here is
in moment of
supreme irony
prince of princes,
awaiting your arrival
thirteen year old fresh-faced
killer Viking face
buried
in a comic
playing you
to a draw you
were lucky to get away with
future champion
of the world, worthy successor,
surpasser,
written all over him
not ready
for it yet, quite,
knocking you
of that
pinnacle pedestal
vaunted height —
who in all that is magnanimous
could have
forseen
would ever have thought?
Someone
for good measure,
needing to read
re-
write his own book again.
SQUARE HOLE
a round peg
in a square game
minds as scrupulous
as serial murderers’
send there
the Knight, with its
principle of rotation
key to
the deconstructive
logic of
the game
and me
learning so little
even by
process
of accretion
not yet close to
developing
the whole 360 grandmaster
vision
no one going to put
me in
a King’s
Gambit TV series
great
move coning
telling
the camera to push in
no here
the lens would get
my blunders skewered
and defeat be
syncopated to those
ruthless clocks
and those
white black zombies
skeletons of whatever
mythological
demons
mystical angels
shipped back to the shelf
in coffin-lidded box
leaving me
to muse on the distance
between myself and
the mystery
at the heart
of this pattern
player
and pieces
light and dark
death
and life
defence
attack
all falling
into place within
this great
little
arena
files a to h
ranks one to eight
such
sweet symmetry
to this
on-going trial
error torment, perpetual debate
WOODEN IF NOT
the pieces
wooden if not
moulded plastic
dink and
dunk
clink
and clunk
across the board
possessed by something
of a calculating demon
expressing itself in
supreme revelation of
wave function
having read
Alekhine, Tal, Lasker
Capablanca
and other 64 square gurus
who put their thoughts
on paper
sold the world
the chess idea
KYLE S AT CHESS
After those blown
final quarters think
I should
play Kyle at chess
across 64 white
black squares
he would
not be at his best
checking on
his playbook
instead of
analyzing the
board
fools mate, scholars mate,
smothered mate
quick
into the pan
fried liver mate
one, two,
three, West
Coast, East Coast
Bobby Fischer
(merciful) mate
he wouldn’t need to
worry about
the torture of
leading
heading into an
endgame, being
outmanouvered
at the end
AND CRAZED CHESS GRANDMASTERS
Nabokov, Nabokov,
there are
Lolitas in the room
and crazed
chess grand masters
who, to this very day,
gave never found themselves
in zugtwang
and
know every opening
backwards
but
the clocks are ready and
all will
commence
perhaps the greatest sequence
of sacrifices ever
to force mate
perhaps it would have been me
in an immortal game
who knows how many times
before
the move was there and
I failed to
see it
CHESS HYPERMODERN
rooks be chariots
and queens
are aircraft carriers
or used
to be
dead in the water
she be
missile vectoring in
on her
down the file, across
the rank
along her sweet open
diagonal
hypersonically
ASH
what a game!
you make a bad move
and all your
carefully laid plans
brilliant tactics
grand strategy
turn to ash
and let me not
get into the endgame
sometimes as the victory
is eked out tiny
move by tiny move
there it is facing you
the horror of your loss
nothing
could be mathematically
certain and yet
hurt
so damned much
ARRAYED
I was playing chess
waiting for the rains
playing chess
that most
complucated of
games
waiting for things
to unfold
thinking
how in our games
we eschew simplicity
hanker after
the perfectly complexity
that in a brief moment
of sublimec brilliance
near
perfect clarity
becomes the near-
perfect metaphor
if not
for life
then for how
life would like
to see
itself
including human life;
our lives as humans
for all their differences,
permutations
anomalies
crystallized for
a moment, for
recorded time
here on the square plain
of this game
inside outside which
I sit
conputing outcomes
considering
every possible move
waiting for the rain
to exhaust itself
clear skies and later
sight of Heaven
there the stars
in some
greater game
silently arrayed.
CASTLE
chess
is my monastery
my sanctuary
my castle
place where across
this stark board where
no holds
are barred
(in the most clearly
defined, scripted
fashion)
white, black, I am allowed
to align myself with
these two
sets of
sixteen pieces
my private
armies
conduct my
inner battles
keeping that pain
death carnage
to myself
CENTRE GAME
e4
we are all
proponemts
of systems theory
carefully guarding our intellectual
territory
each
and every last one of us
creatures of
the system
d5
don”t
make me laugh
at your
intellectual
pretensions
such close-
mindedness
disguised
as “rigour”
does not
seem to me
intellectual
at all
aa territories go
this is one
thin on longditude
flat on
latitude
cannot speak
beyond the bounds
of your
discipline
at all
exd5
we have
the right
to speak
duty
to proclain
for we
have earned them
here
are our certificates
here is our
say so
here the
royal blue ink
the matt gray paint
in which
we validate everything
define what
is in
what is out
who whispers
who shouts
the rules
of the game
who wins, who
loses
what
gets pronoted
who gets checkmated
DEMON
wonder what demon
invented this game
seems
a thing of wood
but the complexities
are blinding
the machine
a thing supreme
designed to tax the brain
the brain to the sublimity
of its limits
and then
as we expand it
expands too
mocking us sweetly, gently,
with diabolical intensity
I see
how far you have come, how
deep we
have dived, how
spectacularly travelled
journeyed together
but so much more
you need to learn
need
to know
aa I square the square
of every little facet, tactic,
sequence, pattern
and strategy
there is to explore
you have to explore
wonder
if the demon inventing
this game
calling it chess
was the greatest of
all demons
first
inventing himself
THING OR TWO
a wealth
of possibilities
a bouquet
of bad moves
a not so
bad move
a good move
the right move
out there
even in some rare instances
down the line
in the thick
of things
heat and
heart
of the battle
a truly transcendent move
redefining the board
landscape
teaching the chess gurus
and serried ranks
of experts
a thing or two
a thing or two
SQUARED
the Universe
likes circles
the Universe
is beholden
to ratios
and squares
speed
of light
squared
sixty
four squares
in eight by
eight
light square
start e4 d4 nf3 c4
dark square
alternating configuration
stop with
a hashtag
and
let us not forget
square deal
square meal
square shooter
square up
and all those squares:
Times, Red,
and Trafalgar
without which
what would history be?
FISCHERED
unfathomable:
all
of
a sudden
find myself deeply
submerged trapped
in the underbelly
of this
leviathan
surreal
that I should ever
even find myself
and it be
revealed it
is
all a game
someone in the neighbourhood
once had the fortune
misfortune
to go fully Bobby Fischer
sail upon the back
of that whale searching for
all that is oceanic
in each
of these sixty-four squares
prodigal progedy
descending bathosphere deep
that he
might ultimately ascend
laugh off
all the pressure, stretch
his brain
around those
crucial choices
so much here
to aspire to
ways
to excell
escape
the trap of every four square
square space
every move
somehow telling
retelling
changing
the story of the Universe itself
THIRTY TWO
thirty two
poems
here
one for
every piece
(white
and black)
should you
wish to
count
which is why
the board
can
feel so damned
cramp
and the space near
infinite in
the endgame
****
AGAINST YOU
was playing chess
with you
and impeccably
against you
yes, impeccably,
and implacably too
came at you with a gambit
to tear out your heart,
crush your
pawn centre
got up
close and personal
before you pulled
out of the hat
some outrageously
new-fangled hybrid
Italo-Russian
defence
ground me down
to a halt
got me
if not suing for peace
then offering a draw
****
SCRATCH
no battalion wears defeat
better than your
personal
chess army
not a wound, not a scar,
not even
a single scratch
no issue
with morale, for
from their box they tumble
a force of
supteme veterans
nor do they care
if your generalship stinks
or be just
not up to scratch
****
AND DIVING
dinking and diving unti
you find your
best
killer outpost
modelled on feudal lord?
this I
think I doubt
for you Sir Knight
are pure
ambush
predator
the fork in your
aggressive disposition reflecting
the fork
in your venomous tongue
****
INSIDE
chess is life
chess is time
chess is choose
make your move
blitz
the board
and smash thar
button down
almost surreal
the string of permutations
from the inside
not the outside
where everything seems
linear logical and
as straight
as can be
poems 2 die for 