chuckles 01 & 02 of 09
Stricken
No knights on castle walls
now tumbled down
no kings stand tall
nor queens by their sides
all lofty heads
of bishops have fallen
while lowest ones
as pawns lie stricken
oh what happened
where have they gone
They were scattered
by a mighty blow
to lie still
upon the floor
for I was a sore loser
at bloody chess.
Bomber
I was the child who peered at them
way down below who scurried as ants
here, there and almost everywhere
but never once stopped to look up
not even when the explosions came
dropped at random from high above where
I lit the firecrackers and bombed the ants
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Comments: 45
I commend you tonight for this astonishing limpid, clean, and satisfying performance of these lived moments in poetry.
The candor of the the comprehensive adult looking back at his childhood antics with both awareness of where the violence came from, as well as an effulgent radiance of mischief that is natural and bright, where the speaker realizes fully the rules (and roles of the chess pieces in the game that he has upset, and the lethal menace detonations from above represent in the face of his own destructive play as a Gulliverian ¨starship trooper¨(we´re celebrating Heinlein´s 100th birthday this month!) on planet earth.
This poem is exhilarating in how it plays with our sense of high import when we first encounter the chess references (Wittgenstein´s language game, human (Russian) genius against computational crunch of the algorithm-rendering Big Blue) and then drops into adolescent folly, with a ne´er-do-well spirit, as if knowingly setting us for an intellectual fall into our own subjective reminiscences, our own foibles with M-80s and mailboxes and intricate endgames when we didn´t resign, we LAUNCHED the board (also in stratego matches.)
But this strategy works, (as so many of your tragicomic scenarios do, Magi, poised between transforming toxic theology into grace and beauty and telling a rollicking tale) because we realize our pretensions of interpreting the poem have been undone by the author in an effort to allow ourselves to see our own early miscapades for what they were, tantrums instead of triumphs, but necessary, allowed, given the crush of our lives made crazy by hidden firecrackers of the heart, as we found a way to go astray (for a blinkering moment or bacchanalian night) from parental restraints that hurt and chafed while we found our blood, our own madness, our rebel that taught us how sometimes doing wrong was good for the soul, the primal howl in us.
And yet, brats all the same--says our adult side--how fitting.
I must confess though, John, I didn't ever actually tip the chess board over - this stunning, much vaunted and emphatic zero-moves-to-mate blitzkrieg manoeuvre has great shock value. However, someone I was playing against did end this ruthless, intellectual warfare (taking no prisoners and showing no mercy whatsoever) with just one such mighty blow. I merely blinked owlishly and reset the chess clock to zero, as one does on such occasions.
I preferred making a queen sacrifice to have the other smug and merciless swine blinking owlishly. Indeed, I'd use all sorts of weird combinations in all-out attack when I used to play chess against all comers in the pub for drinks. The loser would buy the drinks, and the winner was anchored on the board until defeated. When drunk enough, I'd lose. Sometimes deliberately so, just to get away. It wasn't as if I was a Russian chess master, it was just that the opponents weren't Bobby Fischer. LOL ... sigh ... Those were the days. Now I vacillate between the burning pits and Leprechaunia.
Don't think they ever finished a proper game, though one day I'll have to tell you about their 100-square chess board.
" Thunders in the world of OZ"
love and light
You took me back to my childhood when my father was teaching me and my younger brother the rules f chess. Everytime I won over him, he would throw all the pieces astray and declare, ' she cheated!' :O
Bombing ants?? Well, I guess the vegemite had already marked you as a potential ally!
Wonderful take on our 'brat-ful' old selves.
As to Guy Fawkes, they banned it in West Oz after my childhood. But I swear I had nothing to do with it.
http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977069131
... though you probably already know, as it is posted to the Cafe.
(Gotta learn how to create links in the comments.)
Folks, do go and have a read: The 100-Square Chess Board