A Game of Gambits: Chess Poetry

    For Kafka,

I awoke as a bug and

Found a small apple rolling about my feet.

And when I sniffed the apple,

With the two antennas I was gifted,

I found a small worm 

Popping his head from the stem.

This is the bedroom you have given me, 

One disheveled and dusty,

Dry skin from bare feet

Of the dancer as the moon grows dim. 

The angered voice of a woman

Echoing and

Laboring with it’s leprosy

Not yet emerged from a tomb.

My knotted silver

A rotting cactus

And cats 

Hairless, for all their beauty. 

And so I’ve found myself 

Like a small speck of wood, 

A round head,

Felt on a white square,

Body curved as a whale’s spout,

When the walls begin to walk about.

As the trees emerge through the window,

The face of a bishop would so quiver.

Diagonally, reaching from the beyond,

His castle head starts to shake and shiver. 

Aril tipped noses

Curled hands underneath

Fog steams from noses

Growing goosebumps 

Under coats of chain mail.

Red dots swirl on pages

As fingers tip the clock

Side to side

The flat disks

Like hockey pucks

Stacked on the edge

The trees swaying

Bare branches reach to their skin

Swimming through their blood

A fanned leaf of crimson

As I sit from a far

With smudged lead

And scribbled nonsense from my head. 

Boards

And this one girl

Circles of felt along her face

Flecks 

Freckles 

Only from the stars down 

When the clouds swirl around 

Does the tall one fall down

His marble white squares

Shifting left and right

On their backs rise the hairs

In the depths of that night. 

Leg Crosses Knee

I have to think with knees bent

I cannot think on my feet

With the big man

Towering over me. 

His knight of black

A shadow in my mind’s eye

And my pawn

Like a screaming 

Screeching 

Speck of dust.

Up 3

Over 2

Like his nose over me

Will cause me to quake.

Oh, big man,

Nothing but a wall

And a shout.

Long hair

Grips his throat

And the cement falls about. 

Stalemate

Line drawn across the sunset

As the night arises 

And the horses sleep

Beds of hay 

Along a field of robes

Laid down by bishops

By queens

By kings

For the pillows of the pawns

And the castles begin to creek

Settling to sleep

As the stalemate chews at the board.