Tag Archives: chess

PIECES

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

MATE

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

MAIN LINE (THE KASPAROV VERSION)

MAIN LINE (THE KASPAROV VERSION)

feel i have been
here before

but after the first few moves,
main lines of the opening
all the possible
permutations of the situation
make it a mathematical
impossibility near
exactly certain

such nuance, subtlety,
precise artistry, infinte
calculation
    in this rectangular game
of squares and
wooden carvings
     from crude to most
elegant a regular
box of
  delights, of wonderful,
well, surprises

and painful defeats, failures,
steep learning curves
      things you
fail to
see (way beyond your
                   ELO rating)

but Tal saw, Fischer saw,
Magnus Carlsen sees them
with stunning
        predictability

and Capablanca, my Cuban
maestro, saw them shifting
knights and pawns
across a table
              under a palm tree

dreaming today’s moves
during yesterday’s sleep
when he
     sniffs an opening he
is in
to take advantage
         like the ocean

not
   like someone we could
not possibly name in
such chess
circles

splashing around here predictably,
ankle-deep in a derisory
                        little stream