Category Archives: chess poem poetry

SQUARES

SQUARES

dark squares
light squares

he is a classy player:
knows the precise order
of the relationship between them

also is expert with clocks
has clearly established
in the minds of
all and sundry

that come Hell or
high water in a particular game

losing on time
is outright impossibility

Oh that imperial palace
of a poem

    there we see chess in
all its class oppositions
and anxieties

the bishops scrambling down
diagonals like
Hurricane pilots intercepting
the Luftwaffe fighting
to get altitude

in the sky it is so much
nobler

      easier to succumb
to the mythology of the machine

CUT AND DRIED

CUT AND DRIED

thing about chess
is it’s

cut
and dried

you take my bishop
I bomb
    your hospital

there may be pawns down there
lying on gurneys
lurking
    in tunnels

one run
    through to
the perimeter
               and beyond

we could be facing
a brace of Queens

vying to sacrifice for
the triumph of their King

victpry
    defeat

        so strategic this battle
to an altogether special
                                  level
of native
       human genius

nothing in this benighted
                                   world

so cut and dried

UNBOXED

UNBOXED

chess:
so many games played
never
a masterpiece

moves missed (many,
many)
victory
falling by the wayside

and so
I do not succumb to
the joy of a world
of sheer
possibility

where every thought
of genius
lies the far side of a
blunder simply
begging to be

blunders of the kind
you can no way redeem

but here I am
sweating my way on
supposed improvement
trajectory

puzzle after puzzle:
mate in five, four,
three, two
find the best move
now plodding through

with each opportunity grasped
tiny chess revelation

this box-like wonder of a
a perfectly square game
all
blocking, line and
angle

divulging the logos
of its beauty,
glimpse of mystical infinity

unpackages the light
takes
me heart and soul

THERE IS CHESS

THERE IS CHESS

there is chess
and then
there is
the Universe

a game of the fixed and certain
a machine for generating
strategic revision after
strategic revision
endless permutations
no game
ever the same

life and death and final
conflict
across a square board,
by another name

and beneath it all
this quantum ocean
softly fluctuating
dreaming
its dreams

the dream of chess
a beautiful one, a demonic one
a clear-cut straddler
of every division
between beauty
and nightmare

the pieces waiting
at your command

ready to talk their talk
ready to follow
the script

carve
you new pathways

the dark or light wood
moving across the board
pretty much
sub-
light speed

breaking the bounds
of hyperspace
navigating
the labyrinth
inside your head

BACKRANK

BACKRANK

I play chess
to take my mind
off the darkness

but the light squares
they blind me
and I fall into the void
that is
a black square

and the pieces glower
at me when
they are captured because
I was begligent
or blundered into a mistake

but I am determined
that however long it takes
I will have
my first victory

even if I have
to sacrifice everyrhing
i cpuld or might have
been
to win that
single little game