chess

GOODNIGHT MOVES

a game
of structure

and sequence, could
not be more linear

but everymove
of yours
ends up
in checkmate

those knights
working hand in glove
with their
Queen;
Lancelot-Guinevere
complicity in everything

L there
not for
“love”
certainly not
for “learner”

and me
with the foresight
of a pawn
watching front,
back and centre
overlooking
the diagonals

outflanked, double
enveloped
shanked
in the rear

your game a brutal
thing of beauty

seemingly all
of the cuff but
some inner mathematics
lies at
the heart of
such execution tapidly realised
planning (you
could figure
it out
naked
could play it blindfold)

and me
back in my box
my crypt of a crib

such great
goodnight that’s all
see you
in another life moves

hit
queenside, kingside, by
file, by rank

mastermind mistress
at the heart
of everything
pulling all the strings

dominating ftom
the centre (and
oh
what
a centre!)

every opening in
the book
sheer innuendo!

what
ecstasy to
one day
win

when every
loss such a pleasure.

HERE YOU ARE

Oh cruel philosopher
here you are

weeping over
a flogged horse

before
getting shipped off
to intensive care

and hete I am
trying to see
a pattern here
work out how all
these moves
thread together

so much more diffucult
to become
a chess grand master

than your common
garden variety
joyful wisdom existential
superman.

SUREFIRE DEFENCE

I must thank you
for teaching me chess

as I said, as
I told you i know
nothing about the game
have
never played
chess before

and so we played the
strip version
where every piece
I lost
I had to divest
myself, forfeit
some or other
item
of clothing

and so it was
you swept across the board
gobbling up my pawns
and devouring all
my larger pieces

until I was mated, naked
as a baby

long into the night
those victory celebrations

you not notcing
my bishops on
same colour diagonal
missing every
Knight fork, every
en passant

but
a bit of
a conflict of interest here

working on my own
and your own
grandmaster ratings

someday I must
teach you every
gambit
in the book;
every surefire defence

OVERSHOOT

the board
is a blur

they are playing
at lightning speed

my eyes cannot
track the pieces
let alone
my mind

make
sense of the moves

need to
slow this down
to a crawl considerably

right now it is
the red-
hot embodiment of
the brain’s
capacity to
chess overshoot

PIECES

to be
or not to be

they will
not tell you

what could be
good move
never
mind best move

not a whisper
even a
glimpse or
hint

Knight, Queen, Knight
Pawn

kept under wraps
kept to themselves

just waiting for you to
hit the pitfall, move
without
seeing

odds so long against
pulling a Kasparov Carlsen
Fischer worthy gem
out of the hat

magic rabbit
of a combination

plan
     (if that
be the word) not
as solid
     as it seems, something
outside all
that you schemed walking
in through sudden
doorway
       unpredicted
       unobserved

asking you how
you going to get
out of this catastrophe
needing
strategy, fluidity,
flexability

your
calculations so
wooden

in Hamlet were chess
this would be the question

CHESS (for Ian Glenn)

MATE

first
the chess
and there you
got me
King jammed
in the corner by
my own rook

your white knight
on a white charger
simple coup de gras
smothered mate

but nothing
like the chess
the sex afterwards

here the conflagration
much more hussars and
dragoons totally
Napoleonic

me and my Josephine
sharing our huge victory
pincer
movement, double
envelopment
Jena, Austerlitz cannot
hold a candle
to our fantastic
achievement

in the entirety of
military history never
such a
score achieved

Tag Archives: chess