you don't see life as a game of skill
playing hopscotch on the
white and black checkers
reaching out to infinity with their
comforting symmetry
and severe geometry

you say you're unobservant
but how can you look down
at your calloused mud-caked feet
and not see the
chessboard that is pressing
just as stiffly against your feet
as you reach down
and root yourself into it
burying your head in
the world of fantasy games
without winner or loser

i envy your blissful ignorance
your hope
however misplaced

do you simply refuse to see
how every pensive move
rook to E7
knight to C5
seems to me not an attack
on the mockingly vulnerable king
but an action of
vicious hostility towards
the most powerful piece on the board

so the queen enacts
her equal and opposite
reaction
to slash the entire cosmos to ribbons
an infinite fury of blind terror
that seeks blood
and scavenges the last flesh
clinging to bone.