CHESS

CHESS

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 coming on its way
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
constant revision
in practice
           theory

square the hypotenuse
on black white bishop diagonal

chess as life
chess as being