Tag Archives: poetry

CHESS POEMS DEC 27 2024

MOUNTAINS

the mountains
are giant pieces
awaiting
   their first
move

I think
they have  defence up
their sleeve that will
nullify our opening

set a trap with poisoned pieces
that will lure us
to a
   great fall

but we have moved but
no one sees it
news of
     the push of a pawn
into the centre not

yet having
reached us
     time seeming to move
so slowly
the game
taking forever

yet Black is thinking through
all possibilities
        getting those mountains
off the back rank

volcanoes tsunami marshalled
with the gravity of
millennia
          all
         at the speed of light

****

SMOTHERED

smothered mate
Mr Bond

love of
Queen (now King)
and country
has
  squashed you
into a corner

no man supposedly
an island but
you appear
to be a
tiny one

deluded by the believed
magnificence
of your
self-
importance

and now
to put it bluntly
you are
   screwed, have
lost the game

and this
    foreign, highbrow, villainous
post-atomic, cyber-
crime,
    deformed
asexual, intellectual mutant

gloating at how
     you took the Gambit, swallowed
the poisoned pawn

in one wrong move altered
geopolitics
    and the nature
of Empire

and you
with your jaw
hewed from granite and
tinker-tailor brain

wondering if like
Admiral Horatio you too
will be
   elevated above the laiety
on towering
plinth
   or column

as the streets of old-time Motherland  clucking
for
  her lost
children

all smashed to chicken shit
beg you
to resign next move
before,
    like a guillotine, it befalls,
becomes the
iconic moment captured
for all time
   that now will change
                        everything

****

C & C LTD.

playing chess
making love

knights
forking everything
on on the board

I think Cheech and Chong
as in my grandmaster stupor

Chong
   and Cheech

Chong
and Cheech

to know where I am endgaming
right now
need more
    smoke and mirrors

don’t want to Robin Williams genie myself
      into a series of explosive
moves
rebounding in
my face

need some of your C & C good stuff to
take
the edge off
my embarrassment

need to conserve, focus
direct
       until in sight,
within
touch I do get
to light the fuse

Oh
   let the joke not be too
much on me my darlings

cold fusion
        supreme complement
contribution

ultimate solution
to needs and desires,  desires
                                       and needs

****

FINISHING TOUCH

I love
your

finishing
touch

coup de gras
in the corner,
on
  the back rank

Mike Tyson
punch

(the one
all plans crumble in the face of)

****
COUNTER-GAMBIT

pert patterns
swings
   and roundabouts

shuffles
for advantage, pressure
for position

until levee break
dyke broken, centre
folds
    chain
snapped, bullied
into submission
shield wall
cracked open

the dam shattered, Barnes
Wallised into
full flood oblivion

Oh the tactics and strategies
of this unforgiving game

such that
you never see it coming
untl you
do

express mailed
down the highway

****
EVEN THEN

it took a lifetime
to get
  the Muse of Chess

to surrender
here secrets

and even then,
so much in the dark and
light arts
of this game
remains to be known
has not
yet been seen

stuff she is keeping hidden
to reveal to her
future lovers

masters and mistresses
whose mastery
of the game
will always
put me to shame

****
AGAIN

I want to learn
everything there is
to learn
about chess

sit through the night
ploughimg the games
of Lasker, Capablanca,
Alekhine,
Tal, Kasparov
Fischer

learning them by rote
can recite them move
perfect in
     glorious notation

not that will
     ever help prevent
my blundering
my way
    into defeat, time
and time
and time again.

****
PAWN

I am pawn
move forward
one
  step at
a time

kill sideways
(am in this
true Roman legionary)

can move
two at the outset
of battle aa
Initial flourish

but die
like a fly

unless
   ascend to backrank
Heaven, become
Cleopatra, become
Boudecia

****
PLAIN

Knights are sneaky customers

pull that L bend out of nowhete

suddenly
it’s a fork

suddenly its
somthered mate

chess trick queatiln
knight must
be in
the answer somewhere

shifty guy
without which the game
do linear,
  determinate, plain

****
ALL THE MOVES

we manoeuvred our
way across the board

and suddenly
we are iding across
the tiles
    bedward bound

King and Queen
same opposite

building a palace in the sky
knowing
   all the moves

****
MOVES

chess
sex

small
moves.

devastaing
consequences

your move
       short and sweet

the board
spreadeagled

hope you are
about
    your game

****

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