CHESS LOVER
In his game with you
he was playing
like Conan the Barbarian
wanting to
crush you, enslave you,
scatter your pieces
to the four winds
hear
the lamentation
of you as woman
in my game with you
I got steamrollered
my king wanting
to die quietly
in his own bed
or your own bed
my king, my queen and
all my pieces
wanting to lie
checkmated
by you
with most and least chess-
loving prejudice ever imaginable.
MATE
I sacrificed my queen
in order to
mate you
a checkmate can be
a poem, bars of
beautiful music
a dance faultkessly
choreographed
and my queen
back in the box
linchpin of the attack that
left my
ppponent devastated
no one
ready for the sudden
unleashing of my
tactical
tour-de-force
and you
so gracious in defeat
we ran through those moves
until it was the case
she would never forget them
I sacrificed my queen
finding a beautiful forced mate
SINCE
I was cooing
and gurgling mightily
all those years ago
the day I was born
some few years after
the war to end
all wars
(part two)
so unbelievably lucky
to live in a world where
since then
no one
in Syria, Lebanon, Rwanda,
Angola, the Falklands, Iraq,
Eritrea, Algeria
Vietnam or Ukraine
has died or been wounded
or in any way
been inconvenienced by war
such as being
covered in white phosphorus, Sarin gas
or napalm
shredded by machine gun
disembowelled by rocket
burnt to a crisp
by hot cluster bomb
and me gurgling away happy
happy happy
stupidly convinced
I had been brought
into a world
where such things
would not could not
must never
be allowed to happen
CHESS
he bottled some lightning
that one did
who first thought of chess
must have seen
it in a dream
a perfect machine
figure of legend man
whos name is lost
to time
who plunged into
the labyrinth of his brain
found
its dead centure
captured
the square root of
infinity
game
that is everything
board and pieces
complete
package of
symettry
MUST BELIEVE (FOR RYUICHI SAKAMOTO)
where does it come from?
where has it disappeared to?
those opening notes leaving me spellbound
bridge and chorus
taking me far away
I hear you and the angels
and devils of my nature
drop what
they are doing
in their rush to love
sign a peace pact
crazily meant
to
last forever
but whilst it echoes
in my ears refusing to die
I reckon,
must believe
that I am safe
SNAIL
snail
sings itself to sleep
inner voice
resounding in
that shell
recites thd numbers
of the fibonacci
sequence
better than
counting sheep
easier to segue into
fable of a cosmos
it cannot see
but feel
golden spiralling into
imagining itself stuff
of a star such as lens and
book of
belief
assure us we are
snail-like centuries
to get us this far
ALTAMIRA
poem is
when the world
goes binary
poem is
in that darkness
and separation
in a fever of deprival-
induced hallucination
animals in all
our wildness
flash upon
and through the white
cave wall
and we
see everything
suddenly our whole story
shifting revelation
of shapes and forms
death and life
in dance of fusion
and even in depth
of darkness
light
of suns, message of
a star
VOICES
those voices
surge, they burn
promise to become
incandescent, and
threaten it too
behind
this shield of gases, vapours
we do not see the odd
star dance, others
as the old tale tells,
stopped
in their tracks
to hear such spluttering lives
take flame, exult, exalt
as if
they were lines
in the same grear epic
one great poem
one pure song
the hall echoing for
years thereafter
.this empty hall echoing
still echoing if only
we could still hear it
compare it to the sound of
the ice cracking, seismic
ripples
and tears
as
our voices lost
our poetry gone
the world chooses silence
and now fragments
LITTLE WORDS
little words
William, neat, little
but they rhyme
like a charm
their lightning
hits you long
you even sense how
easily seeming simplicity
has
got the better
of you
these little words of power
prowling across the page
burning
with mutable malleable
fire
fore you
stand shocked
fooling yourself
poems 2 die for