Tag Archives: chess

QUARK QUARK

QUARK QUARK

I was fishing for quarks
in my mind
whilst playing chess

sometimes the serendipity
of the game
appeals

but not today where
every move is
wrong and
I am getting
battered to Hell

feudal and hierarchical
totally unforgiving on the surface
and in its depth

yet as gorgeous Gary,
incomparable attacker knew
it is all
      metaphor, life
lesson

this
    from the outset

as he rotates his way at
the table
     through every conceivable
variation of every conceivable defence

exuding Russian intensity
and Russian charm

(test and you will see
in exactly
      equal meaaure)

meanwhile the quaeks in my
brain are less like
sharks
     in the ocean than
Koi in a pond

all flash
      but no dash

my game in its death throes
thinking of the
great wizard of
Reykjavik
                his brilliance so
beyond me
beyond anything I am

I scan, I plan
      only the odd good move

bobbing up
     to greet me only when
could not be more obvious

quark
quark

nothing moving
from my side of  the board

                             not now

not ever

BACKRANK

BACKRANK

I stumbled
bumbled
through the game
no
   white knight
on white horse personified

kept
    bumping into
pawns of my own
and opposite colour

eventually
     (shock and schlock horror)

blundering into the long lethal
arms
     of a rapacious dark
square queen.

FIGURES

FIGURES

figures
were fashioned

no sooner so
than they produced
brutal beauty

an angular ballet across
a square battlefield

the mind stretched to its limit
to master
     have complete power over

surrogate for war itself
and yet still the shock
and
     sharp self-
recognition
            in defeat

figures were fashioned

you could spend a lifetime
exploring, imagining

that entire
little universe that
accrues to them

AND CRAZED CHESS GRANDMASTERS

AND CRAZED CHESS GRANDMASTERS

Nabokov, Nabokov,
there are
Lolitas in the room
and crazed
chess grand masters

who, to this very day,
gave never found themselves
in zugtwang

and
    know every opening
backwards

but
    the clocks are ready and
all will
commence

perhaps the greatest sequence
of sacrifices ever
to force mate

perhaps it would have been me
in an immortal game

who knows how many times
before
   the move was there and
I failed to
     see it

MARS

MARS

Ah, Mars
you red-eyed god
of grain
    and guns

here on the farm I smell
your secret cordite,
perpetual war
    concord, discord
forever
   in battle

circle of being, conflict
of life

    the trees, the corn
all
   akin to spears

as they stand in phalynx
tall and proud

except

      that is not it
at all

this is the shape of thinking,
seeing that you bring

reducing to raw red, rampant
green, crude
primary
       colours and basic shades

as if it were all one
monochrome chess
                           games

with its millions of moves
and permutations

light and dark on
       opposite sides of the board

split from each other
                drawn up in opposition
files and ranks

a most
    feudal arrangement

STOCKFISH

STOCKFISH

my pieces do not flow
they are all
nut
and bolt

whilst the Stockfish pieces
swarm to devour
attack like piranhas

strip my defence down
to bare bones

there’s blood
in the water though you cannot
see it

Oh, that one day my
chess brain might
be Achilles and his Myrmidons
so brutally fleet
and adept
at butchering

slaughter without mercy
and then we shall find

out exactly what you
are made of
my artificially intelligent friend

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