chess poem poetry – poems 2 die for

BY THE BOOK

BY THE BOOK

blundered into something:

a game of intransigence

two clocks
playing chess against each other

too early
in the showdown
for any
nuclear option

both
imagining playing
by the book

still
an infinite supply of pawns

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

MOVES

I like your moves

how you push your queen
killer dress and robe
drippimg pearls
and diamonds

up against
my queen

inviting exchsnge

which means
something bad bad bad
for me

if I were
to succumb, be seduced

lose all my acumen at the
exhilirating prospect
of such a luscious transaction

where
discretion and evasion
would be

the more solid reaction.
..

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

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