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
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
QUEEN
You were
so well
camouflaged
on your square
(white on
white
or was it
black
on black?)
I thought you
were empty but
you were
full of yourself
sequin sultry and silk deadly
decidedly daggered
every inch a queen.
CLASSIC
want to see
the water
cascading
down you
in my
scruffy little
shower find
you
gone full
Botticelli
Venus
newly born
and our love,
which you proclaim Platonic
shadow-shown
on the wall of
my mouldy bathroom
though would rather that it
were enacted
comically, tragically
in the cosy comfort
of our cave
GAVE
I gave
blood
gave
money
gave
humanity
gave poetry
inspired by
a drink
made from
agave
gave gave gave
but you took
you pocketed
swallowed everything
finished the lot
shot
through my resources
like a machine that eats
you up totally
run
by artificial intelligence
they usher you
into your
world of debt
sweet electronic swindlers
connecting you instantly
to your
dream of wealth and capital
each replacing a host of humans
once the
social face
of every bank.
COTTON CANDY
you must
fight and die
for cotton candy
fight and die
for a thin processed
meat sausage
jammed
into role
you must
fight and die
to appease, suppress
our archetypal
shadow
for aeons old
collective guilt
you no longer feel
must give your life
throw it away for nothing really
for your right
to keep God for yourself
address him
in your language by the very
name you gave him
translated from a foreign,
ancient text
you do not own
and can no
longer read
but above all, hero,
it’s
for
cotton candy
ET DECORUM EST
dulce et decorum est
stupid
dullness dummkopfs
at the
Cenotaph
closer in
every apect
of brutish breath
not to Owen or
Siegfried Sassoon
but to Munchen Putsch
golden boy
with dreams of millenial
supremacist Empire
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
WING
Oh my little
chaos butterfly
soft as a poem
you flap
your wings
but no storm
no hurricane
agitated to fury
other
side of
the globe
by the breath
of this
wind
just
megaton upon
megaton
falling to
Earth
spawned
of this gossamer
first strike that will leave
in its wake
no speck
of life
not a tiny
living thing.
HOSPITAL
went to a bombed out hospital
got projected
onto a screen
saw it there
shadow of my
brutality
lucky
for me
not terminal
fatal
in fact
a most civilized thing
poems 2 die for