chess

GRANDMASTER

I am a grandmaster
I play chess
and more chess
and more chess

once i thought
when quantum
physics arrived
when every
board in
my head
became
superimposed

everything in
the Universe
everything outside
of chess
would curl
up at
the edges

I did not
to the best of my knowledge
curl up at the edges

maybe
because there is
nothing in
me
outside of chess

maybe
I am so far
down the rabbit hole

I am the only thing
outside of chess
since the beginning
of two clock
recorded time.

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

SPEAKING DIAGONALLY OF WHITE SQUARE BISHOPS

SPEAKING DIAGONALLY OF
WHITE SQUARE BISHOPS

white or black
it is the fate
of this bishop

to cling diagonally
to the white squares

long
range woe slinger
if you are
ecclesiastical
so is
every Angel of death

alabaster brain
under iconic mitre

you trust
to a white theology
to avoid abyss

the enemy knight
so alien a being
to your simple understanding

to close on one
only to hear
it has disappeared

trying
to always be on track, most
when fianchettoed
demanding clarity
fearing
antithesis

for you
other colour comes
to challenging everything Holy

all war
jihad unless

it be crusade

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)

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?

C & C LTD

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

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

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

ARRAYED

ACROSS THE BOARD

what royal devil here
in the meticulous detail?

from a to h and
one to eight

get your computation
one square wrong and
what you
calculated plain
sailing takes you
through
the logic of
a Scylla and Charibdis

on your hero’s
doomed journey across
this unforgiving board

every distinction absolute
here, across the board