Tag Archives: life

CHESS

CHESS

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

THAT CAT


THAT CAT

they all died
all
  are alive

that cat
in the hat in the box always finds itself emerging
forever doomed to
survive

sick to the death at
the, possibility
of this terrible solipsism

having to better believe
it’s a fantastic layer cake
of endless simulation 

nudge me
   if you have a question, feel
you’ve stumbled
upon the meaning

I may not be deceased just
unable to sleep

POSTSCRIPT

POSTSCRIPT

footnote
postscrip

let me whisper to you
the request I made
to the Moon
to simply erase me

easy it is
   to scheme a Hell
for consciousness, one
that will certainly work, do
a good job

as you see me here nicely dissected
set out as
shards
    broken into pieces

by the time you stagger
onto the scene
to salvage
     what you can

not a trace, not a trace,
last thought I had
record
   of that place

my books
fighting their own little
almighty war against
the persistence
of dust

perhaps you might shut
that one lying
upside down on the bed

so much in there
perhaps of interest
           presenting some
doorway
calling you to
the window

can add to the memory of
bittersweet memories of
the best memes
of humanity

as adjusted, edited,
presented
     themed in major
or minor key

if you had bothered to read,
scan, copy,
scatter
    surmise
    
if you had bothered
                 felt the need

POEM IN STONE

POEM IN STONE

prim village
but turn over
enough stones

shape shifters, Caesars,
serial-killers

and
   at the tiny railway station
connecting nowhere
to everywhere
(all
roads lead to)

what slipped off
the rails
what
dark dreams?
(always a train
in a surrealist painting)

Oh and
there the tunnel

who knows
if there is light

if there
is other end?

something big
once stirred here
dared
a big net
to catch it

people remember, will
tell you,

      people forget

what brought them here;
what took them hence

RETURN

RETURN

sat by the oasis
dreaming of the ocean
dreaming of rivers.

sonetimes
water is everything
whole story
story beyond story

not your cockeyed
fable, an affront
to intelligence, all
our sensibilities

trying to tell me
it was delivered unto you
directly from Heaven
that angels had in a hand
in all the suffering
this has caused

so badly told, open
to simple deconstruction

the power that
truth must speak to

the lie
     so ingrained, expression
of that darkneds to which
front
beginning of time
we have
always aspired

but as for me
waiting at this oasis
for whatever inspiration

know how in this
business, words
                       beginning
to swim

line by
line
moment by moment

thinking, writing the river
the ocean

suddenly all talk
is of this great return

FAR FROM IT

FAR FROM IT

far from it,
we did not
get rid
of them

as vicious and
insufferable
as they had become

we just let them
fade into nothing
embrace
    non-being

going nowhere
we simply allowed them
to reach
   that destination

perhaps ushering them
a little
    but it was for
their own good

genocide?
    no that is their
much contested term
and yet
habitual practice

such actions
          lie beyond us
this word
not in
our vocabulary

but see
     look here

admire
what we have done with
the planet
       how we have integrated
everything, biological
and technological
organic
   and machine

everything flourishing,
renewable and recyclable

this
    our mandate terrestrial
and cosmic
in equal aesthetic and
intellectual measure

ours
   is the new spirituality
to take
   across the galaxy

theirs a
     contempt for themselves,
the sacredness of being
and life
        of every living thing