Here is a primer on the history of poetry

Features of Modernism

To varying extents, writing of the Modernist period exhibits these features:

1. experimentation

belief that previous writing was stereotyped and inadequate
ceaseless technical innovation, sometimes for its own sake
originality: deviation from the norm, or from usual reader expectations
ruthless rejection of the past, even iconoclasm

2. anti-realism

sacralisation of art, which must represent itself, not something beyond preference for allusion (often private) rather than description
world seen through the artist's inner feelings and mental states
themes and vantage points chosen to question the conventional view
use of myth and unconscious forces rather than motivations of conventional plot

3. individualism

promotion of the artist's viewpoint, at the expense of the communal
cultivation of an individual consciousness, which alone is the final arbiter
estrangement from religion, nature, science, economy or social mechanisms
maintenance of a wary intellectual independence
artists and not society should judge the arts: extreme self-consciousness
search for the primary image, devoid of comment: stream of consciousness
exclusiveness, an aristocracy of the avant-garde

4. intellectualism

writing more cerebral than emotional
work is tentative, analytical and fragmentary, more posing questions more than answering them
cool observation: viewpoints and characters detached and depersonalized
open-ended work, not finished, nor aiming at formal perfection
involuted: the subject is often act of writing itself and not the ostensible referent

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Expressionism

Expressionism was a phase of twentieth-century writing that rejected naturalism and romanticism to express important inner truths. The style was generally declamatory or even apocalyptic, endeavoring to awaken the fears and aspirations that belong to all men, and which European civilization had rendered effete or inauthentic. The movement drew on Rimbaud and Nietzsche, and was best represented by German poetry of the 1910-20 period. Benn, Becher, Heym, Lasker-Schüler, Stadler, Stramm, Schnack and Werfel are its characteristic proponents, {1} though Trakl is the best known to English readers. {2} {3}

Like most movements, there was little of a manifesto, or consensus of beliefs and programmes. Many German poets were distrustful of contemporary society — particularly its commercial and capitalist attitudes — though others again saw technology as the escape from a perceived "crisis in the old order". Expressionism was very heterogeneous, touching base with Imagism, Vorticism, Futurism, Dadaism and early Surrealism, many of which crop up in English, French, Russian and Italian poetry of the period. Political attitudes tended to the revolutionary, and technique was overtly experimental. Nonetheless, for all the images of death and destruction, sometimes mixed with messianic utopianism, there was also a tone of resignation, a sadness of "the evening lands" as Spengler called them.

Expressionism also applies to painting, and here the characteristics are more illuminating. The label refers to painting that uses visual gestures to transmit emotions and emotionally charged messages. In the expressive work of Michelangelo and El Greco, for example, the content remains of first importance, but content is overshadowed by technique in such later artists as van Gogh, Ensor and Munch. By the mid twentieth-century even this attenuated content had been replaced by abstract painterly qualities — by the sheer scale and dimensions of the work, by colour and shape, by the verve of the brushwork and other effects.

Expressionism often coincided with rapid social change. Germany, after suffering the horrors of the First World War, and ineffectual governments afterwards, fragmented into violently opposed political movements, each with their antagonistic coteries and milieu. The painting of these groups was very variable, but often showed a mixture of aggression and naivety. Understandably unpopular with the establishment  — denounced as degenerate by the Nazis — the style also met with mixed reactions from the picture-buying public. It seemed to question what the middle classes stood for: convention, decency, professional expertise. A great sobbing child had been let loose in the artist's studio, and the results seemed elementally challenging. Perhaps German painting was returning to its Nordic roots, to small communities, apocalyptic visions, monotone starkness and anguished introspection.

What could poetry achieve in its turn? Could it use some equivalent to visual gestures, i.e. concentrate on aspects of the craft of poetry, and to the exclusion of content? Poetry can never be wholly abstract, a pure poetry bereft of content. But clearly there would be a rejection of naturalism. To represent anything faithfully requires considerable skill, and such skill was what the Expressionists were determined to avoid. That would call on traditions that were not Nordic, and that were not sufficiently opposed to bourgeois values for the writer's individuality to escape subversion. Raw power had to tap something deeper and more universal.

Hence the turn inward to private torments. Poets became the judges of poetry, since only they knew the value of originating emotions. Intensity was essential.  Artists had to believe passionately in their responses, and find ways of purifying and deepening those responses — through working practices, lifestyles, and philosophies. Freud was becoming popular, and his investigations into dreams, hallucinations and paranoia offered a rich field of exploration. Artists would have to glory in their isolation, moreover, and turn their anger and frustration at being overlooked into a belief in their own genius. Finally, there would be a need to pull down and start afresh, even though that contributed to a gradual breakdown in the social fabric and the apocalypse of the Second World War.

Expressionism is still with us. Commerce has invaded bohemia, and created an elaborate body of theory to justify, support and overtake what might otherwise appear infantile and irrational. And if traditional art cannot be pure emotional expression, then a new art would have to be forged. Such poetry would not be an intoxication of life (Nietzsche's phrase) and still less its sanctification.  Great strains on the creative process were inevitable, moreover, as they were in Georg Trakl's case, who committed suicide shortly after writing the haunting and beautiful piece given below

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SYMBOLIST POETS
symbolism in poetry

Symbolism in literature was a complex movement that deliberately extended the evocative power of words to express the feelings, sensations and states of mind that lie beyond everyday awareness. The open-ended symbols created by Charles Baudelaire (1821-67) brought the invisible into being through the visible, and linked the invisible through other sensory perceptions, notably smell and sound. Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-98), the high priest of the French movement, theorized that symbols were of two types. One was created by the projection of inner feelings onto the world outside. The other existed as nascent words that slowly permeated the consciousness and expressed a state of mind initially unknown to their originator.

None of this came about without cultivation, and indeed dedication. Poets focused on the inner life. They explored strange cults and countries. They wrote in allusive, enigmatic, musical and ambiguous styles. Rimbaud deranged his senses and declared "Je est un autre". Von Hofmannstahl created his own language. Valéry retired from the world as a private secretary, before returning to a mastery of traditional French verse. Rilke renounced wife and human society to be attentive to the message when it came.

Not all were great theoreticians or technicians, but the two interests tended to go together, in Mallarmé most of all. He painstakingly developed his art of suggestion, what he called his "fictions". Rare words were introduced, syntactical intricacies, private associations and baffling images. Metonymy replaced metaphor as symbol, and was in turn replaced by single words which opened in imagination to multiple levels of signification. Time was suspended, and the usual supports of plot and narrative removed. Even the implied poet faded away, and there were then only objects, enigmatically introduced but somehow made right and necessary by verse skill. Music indeed was the condition to which poetry aspired, and Verlaine, Jimenez and Valéry were among many who concentrated efforts to that end.

So appeared a dichotomy between the inner and outer lives. In actuality, poets led humdrum existences, but what they described was rich and often illicit: the festering beauties of courtesans and dance-hall entertainers; far away countries and their native peoples; a world-weariness that came with drugs, isolation, alcohol and bought ***. Much was mixed up in this movement — decadence, aestheticism, romanticism, and the occult — but its isms had a rational purpose, which is still pertinent. In what way are these poets different from our own sixties generation? Or from the young today: clubbing, experimenting with relationships and drugs, backpacking to distant parts? And was the mixing of sensory perceptions so very novel or irrational? Synaesthesia was used by the Greek poets, and indeed has a properly documented basis in brain physiology.

What of the intellectual bases, which are not commonly presented as matters that should engage the contemporary mind, still less the writing poet? Symbolism was built on nebulous and somewhat dubious notions: it inspired beautiful and historically important work: it is now dead: that might be the blunt summary. But Symbolist poetry was not empty of content, indeed expressed matters of great interest to continental philosophers, then and now. The contents of consciousness were the concern of Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), and he developed a terminology later employed by Heidegger (1889-1976), the Existentialists and hermeneutics. Current theories on metaphor and brain functioning extend these concepts, and offer a rapprochement between impersonal science and irrational literary theory.

So why has the Symbolism legacy dwindled into its current narrow concepts? Denied influence in the everyday world, poets turned inward, to private thoughts, associations and the unconscious. Like good Marxist intellectuals they policed the area they arrogated to themselves, and sought to correct and purify the language that would evoke its powers. Syntax was rearranged by Mallarmé. Rhythm, rhyme and stanza patterning were loosened or rejected. Words were purged of past associations (Modernism), of non-visual associations (Imagism), of histories of usage (Futurism), of social restraint (Dadaism) and of practical purpose (Surrealism). By a sort of belated Romanticism, poetry was returned to the exploration of the inner lands of the irrational. Even Postmodernism, with its bric-a-brac of received media images and current vulgarisms, ensures that gaps are left for the emerging unconscious to engage our interest

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IMAGIST POETRY
imagist poetry

Even by twentieth-century standards, Imagism was soon over. In 1912 Ezra Pound published the Complete Poetical Works of its founder, T.E. Hulme (five short poems) and by 1917 the movement, then overseen by Amy Lowell, had run its course. {1} {2} {3} {4} {5} The output in all amounted to a few score poems, and none of these captured the public's heart. Why the importance?

First there are the personalities involved — notably Ezra Pound, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams {6} {7} {8} {9} — who became famous later. If ever the (continuing) importance to poets of networking, of being involved in movements from their inception, is attested, it is in these early days of post-Victorian revolt.

Then there are the manifestos of the movement, which became the cornerstones of Modernism, responsible for a much taught in universities until recently, and for the difficulties poets still find themselves in. The Imagists stressed clarity, exactness and concreteness of detail. Their aims, briefly set out, were that:

1. Content should be presented directly, through specific images where possible.
2. Every word should be functional, with nothing included that was not essential to the effect intended.
3. Rhythm should be composed by the musical phrase rather than the metronome.

Also understood — if not spelled out, or perhaps fully recognized at the time — was the hope that poems could intensify a sense of objective reality through the immediacy of images.

Imagism itself gave rise to fairly negligible lines like:

You crash over the trees,
You crack the live branch…  (Storm by H.D.)

Nonetheless, the reliance on images provided poets with these types of freedom:

1. Poems could dispense with classical rhetoric, emotion being generated much more directly through what Eliot called an objective correlate: "The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an 'objective correlative'; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked." {10}

2. By being shorn of context or supporting argument, images could appear with fresh interest and power.

3. Thoughts could be treated as images, i.e. as non-discursive elements that added emotional colouring without issues of truth or relevance intruding too mu
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PROSE BASED POETRY
prose based poetry

When free verse lacks rhythmic patterning, appearing as a lineated prose stripped of unnecessary ornament and rhetoric, it becomes the staple of much contemporary work. The focus is on what the words are being used to say, and their authenticity. The language is not heightened, and the poem differs from prose only by being more self-aware, innovative and/or cogent in its exposition.

Nonetheless, what looks normal at first becomes challenging on closer reading — thwarting expectations, and turning back on itself to make us think more deeply about the seemingly innocuous words used. And from there we are compelled to look at the world with sharper eyes, unprotected by commonplace phrases or easy assumptions. Often an awkward and fighting poetry, therefore, not indulging in ceremony or outmoded traditions.
What is Prose?

If we say that contemporary free verse is often built from what was once regarded as mere prose, then we shall have to distinguish prose from poetry, which is not so easy now. Prose was once the lesser vehicle, the medium of everyday thought and conversation, what we used to express facts, opinions, humour, arguments, feelings and the like. And while the better writers developed individual styles, and styles varied according to their purpose and social occasion, prose of some sort could be written by anyone. Beauty was not a requirement, and prose articles could be rephrased without great loss in meaning or effectiveness.

Poetry, though, had grander aims. William Lyon Phelps on Thomas Hardy's work: {1}

"The greatest poetry always transports us, and although I read and reread the Wessex poet with never-lagging attention — I find even the drawings in "Wessex Poems" so fascinating that I wish he had illustrated all his books — I am always conscious of the time and the place. I never get the unmistakable spinal chill. He has too thorough a command of his thoughts; they never possess him, and they never soar away with him. Prose may be controlled, but poetry is a possession. Mr. Hardy is too keenly aware of what he is about. In spite of the fact that he has written verse all his life, he seldom writes unwrinkled song. He is, in the last analysis, a master of prose who has learned the technique of verse, and who now chooses to express his thoughts and his observations in rime and rhythm."

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OPEN FORMS IN POETRY
open forms in poetry

Poets who write in open forms usually insist on the form growing out of the writing process, i.e. the poems follow what the words and phrase suggest during the composition

Your sinful mouth is my tomb,
intoxicating its sweet bloom,
for all my virtues are put to sleep.
I drink uncontrollably from its well
and sink freely into its depths,
gazing blissfully into hell.

My hot flesh glows in his breath,
I tremble, like a spring rosebush
kissed by warm May rain.
- I follow you into the wild land of sin
and pick fire lilies by the roads,
- even if I can’t find home again…

Your soul, which loves my own,
Is woven with it into an old Tibetan rug.

Strand by strand, these enamored colours,
Stars, that courted each other across heaven's length.

Our feet are resting on this treasure
Stitches numbering in the thousands.

Sweet desert son on your musk plant throne,
How long has your mouth kissed my own
and cheek to cheek has time in colour woven us?

-Else Lasker-Schüler (Translation : Westley Barnes, 2018)

The Vision of Chess
"Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate"
The Vision of Judgment,
Lord Byron

1

Hail, sixty-four squared altar of my doom!
Where I, a washed-up husband, pale and stressed,  -
While dishes stack like skyscrapers in gloom,
and kids belt out some earworm they’ve obsessed, -
I click my bishop forth with trembling hand,
A modern Nero in a mouse command.

Oh, Chess! Brain-teasing, sweet time-sucking game,
Where men of leisure waste their waking hours,
While wives, in wrath, but whisper not our name,
Lest we should mock wife's frail domestic powers.
For what’s a husband’s duty? Mop the floors?
Or chase the black and white to victory’s shore?
It does not matter — wives shall weep the more,
And call you childish — nah - yet play we must,
Till death or stalemate stills our foolish lust.

Oh, Chess! Thou thief of kisses, sly and cold,
Who steals the fire that else might warm the bed —
What hands, which once did roam in passion bold,
Now idly push a pawn or knight instead?
What midnight sighs are lost to checkmate’s art,
When lips might meet, and trembling fingers twine?
Yet kings and queens command the foolish heart,
And love’s sweet gambit fades with each passed line.
So wives lie cold, betrayed by chess’s scheme,
While men kneel — not to love, but to a Queen.

2

“But chess is noble!” I shout to the void,
“Not like those sweaty Call of Duty crews!”
Wife doesn’t care—her wifely rage deployed,
My pawn’s sweet moves won’t calm her dishpan blues.
Same crime, same mess: the floor’s a wreck, the bed
Unmade — while pawns dance in my empty head.

So here I sit, a forty-something champ,
My mouse - my sword, the screen - my epic quest.
Pawns drop like flies before the coffee’s amped,
Bishops get smoked by tricks I’ve long professed.
“Brain rules!” I yell—but when the chores pile high,
My queen bolts fast, and I just wave bye-bye.

3

Check out the fate of dudes past forty years:
All fun shrinks down to kid-stuff we adore.
The couch-bound football fan drowns in his beers,
The LARPers clank around and ask for more.
But snowboard bros, once shredding peaks with flair,
Now flop like dads on hills of pure despair.

But wait! One trick can dodge the spousal shade:
Slap “job” on hobbies, watch the scorn retreat.
Bloggers spew hot takes, call it “getting paid,”
Priests dodge the grind with sermons oh-so-sweet.
You start a cult — and housework’s off your plate,
A pro-level flex to sidestep boring fate.

4

But me? I’m chess or bust—need no grandmaster fame,
Nor stuffy clubs with suits and fake applause.
Let “Go” nerds stew in never ending game -
I’ve got three kids – three terrors with no laws.
A quick blitz match, my caffeine-fueled retreat,
“Brain food!” I mutter, dodging chore defeat.

Yet sometimes, through the crumbs and coffee rings,
I glimpse the pros — chess gods who rake in cash.
They shrug off wife aggro with prize bling-bling,
Legends who play while dodging household trash.
But wait — what’s that? A glow through window cracks?
Not dawn — it’s Kovalyov’s canadian pantsless flack!

5

So, came this day—nay, mark the very hour!—
Chess world flipped out with fashion-fueled delight.
Young Kovalyov, Canada’s proud brain-power,
Stormed on Tbilisi, eager for a fight.
Not stalemate’s dread nor rival’s sneaky art—
His knee-length shorts - that was the thing that tore his game apart.

“GM” before his name — a shiny tag,
Which fools read Grandmaster (and so do I).
But real ones know it’s just a humble brag:
“Mom, I’m not a loser!” comes his cry.
And moms, since time began, just nod and say,
“Sure, kid, it’s fine — now go and win the day!”

6

What wrecked his vibe? No chess trap, no cruel twist—
Just Thomas Delega, say Polish-born.
He clocked those knees and threw a judgy hiss:
“Pants, man! The Code’s a rule you can’t unlearn!”
Kovalyov, half-dressed usual - but a mess,
Bare legs sparked scandal — chess’s wildest stress.

“Grzegorz! Three days have passed that I’ve rocked this fit!
Since when do knights need slacks to slay a king?
Did Morphy’s tie get checked? Did Lasker bring
A label saying ‘Dry Clean’? What a thing!
You’d think it’s Wimbledon, not boardgame lore—
Next, rooks in bowties? I’m out the door!”

7

And here - from Georgia’s hills, a titan strode,
Zurab Azmaiparashvili — GM triple-stack!
(At his age, it’s less skill, more “I’ve got the code—
Beat your granddad with dice, and that’s a fact!”)
His growl shook the hall like a thunderclap:
“Defy tradition? Kid, you’re in my trap!”

GM - OLD-SCHOOL TITAN:

"I, who played Fischer 'neath the Iron Curtain,
Who saw Kasparov's cardigans for certain—
I say: No bare legs below the belt, you hear?
Chess ain’t a beach bash for a TikTok’s cheer!
Suit up, you punk, or taste eternal doom—
The board’s no catwalk for your Hollister gloom!
Shorts-wearing brat, You think rules don’t apply?
I’ve crushed kings since your mom was all knee-high!
Again - I've battled kings ere you were born,
I say: No shorts upon the sacred board!

GM - MAMA’S BOY CHAMPION:

“Three days I’ve rocked this fit—so why flip now?
What’s with the sudden pants-policing vow?”

GM - OLD-SCHOOL TITAN:

“What’s wrong with you, boy, flashing knees like that?
This ain’t some surf shack—you’re on my mat!
Think you’re a rebel, some board-riding ape?
We guard the game’s soul, not your summer escape!
Get lost, you rogue—you Gypsy trash, I said—
No shorts-clad clown’s wrecking my chess spread!”

(Ah, mark the statesman's art! When tempers rise,
The wise man picks his slurs with enterprise:
Jews own the banks, and Russians stir the *—
But Gypsies? Perfect scapegoats! They'll... er... not
Sue. Though Kovalyov—that "pantsless bitch"—
took deep offense with sudden gypsy stitch.)

GM - MAMA’S BOY CHAMPION:

“What crusty, old-man venom’s stuff is this?
I’m out—but hear me, your insults won’t stick,
You fossilized relic, stuck in your strange bliss!
Your reign’s on fumes, you are Jurassic prick.
Enjoy your throne, you wrinkled crazy czar—
My loyal lawyers are drafting while you spar!”

GM - OLD-SCHOOL TITAN:

"I built this game empire on checkered gold,
I funneled millions through my Georgian hold!
This runt dares mock the sacred code I wrote?
I’ll make him kneel — or slit his fukking* throat."

8

Then Capablanca’s ghost slid in, all chill,
“Zurab, you’d whine if God moved pawns downhill!”
Last Fischer came from nowhere, problematic,
"I told you - all those Russians love to cheat!
Now add some 'clotheshorse' to crooked shemes Asiatic—
Next they'll demand we kiss our king's corrupted feet!
Hey Boy! Your shorts are battle dress - me being enigmatic—
I have no clue what I am saying, dammn,
Let’s burn this *fuckinng circus down, GM!"

9

But then — from frozen lands, a clapback bold!
The Maple Leaf Federation cleared its throat.
(A shock! Since sports bureaucrats, truth be told,
move slower than a dial-up modem’s note.)
"If 'gypsy' be thy slur of choice, Grandmaster,
Know this: Our knight may lack pants, but he's
No target for thy Cold War-era disaster
Of rhetoric. We stand — perplexed — by these
Exposed but principled Canadian knees!"

10

You think that Canada is just some hockey's hype?
They're blasting dingers and lacrosse a lot.
But chess up north's an unexpected type:
Each pawn with stick and fukked* while smoking pot.
The bishops blaze in a THC storm.
How was this Federation even born?

Two Jews from Odessa (then-Soviet) took their shot -
Two masters from Soborka chessboard's fray -
"In Canada, we'll score a noble lot:
Let's form a Federation - clean and grey!
Report the cash as gifts from gays and queer,
Then skim our three percent - and disappear."

Their paperwork was filed with lawyer's grace -
with a nonprofit shield and lots of honors.
Each tournament did fill their pockets' space,
While CRA got screwed by happy donors.
Oh Canada! Your tolerance is grand:
With logo shaped like puck - you are in demand.

11

FIDE flared up, its temper old and gray,
With twenty million stacked in vaults below,
Its voice  — a boom that made the chessboard sway —
Roared loud, a mix of rage and twisted glow:
"Dammn* Canada — get out, hey - you're dreaming!
Zurab’s cash will not move t'your fuukking* den!
“Gens una Sumus” says our motto - meaning -
your're stuck with three percent - while we have TEN!"

But soon that curse was drowned in wilder sound,
As chess broke free, like stars through Hubble’s lens,
New worlds on worlds flashed out, unbound, profound,
A sprawl of moves no rulebook comprehends —
Like rabbits hummpiing* under cosmic trends.

12

Then came a mob — no one could pin their source,
Some black-hole crack where asteroids vanish -  
The Chess Pros Fed, spitting a lot of words
In Russian, English, German, French and Spanish:
"Zurab, you Georgian mutt, your end’s a bet!
No FIDE ghost will shield you from our grip—
Tbilisi, two weeks — time to place your debt —
Bow now, or we will DOGE your sinking ship!"

Then head of Canada's Chess Federation shrieked,
A suit named Vlad Drukletch, some nervous jerrk.
(Croat or not, his roots were hard to leek).
He stepped up too, all pale, his words a perk.
And puzzle cleared itself like long awaited ace,
Unveiling why this war began in the first place.

13

Few years ago the wheel of power *jjerrked —
Steve Harper crashed, that right-wing king of gloom,
Trudeau soared up, all snowboards, rights, and work
For climate, weeeedd, and every woke-asss* bloom.
The Right hoards cash till people’s patience frays,
Then Lefties swoop, with rights and pot to spare,
The finance system dies in liberal haze,
Plus NDP just doubles down on flair —
and splits the wreck, with ruins everywhere.

When funds dry up, the Right locks down the vault,
But when they bulge, the Left burns through the stack —
It's not just Russia stumbles in this fault,
The world’s a drunk who’s lost the sober track —
It's reeling blind from dawn down to pitch-black.
Still, here’s the catch: the whip lands when it’s due,
Each decade, business kneels to take its hit.
A messed-up game, sure, but it’s got a clue —
More fair than screws that tighten bit by bit,
A grind where no one ever calls for quit.

14

The leftward tide now sweeps both East and West,
While right-wing fools still cling to what they know.
"Let's work!" they cry. "No whining! Earn your bread!"
The left just wails "Oppression!" loud and low.
When pipelines thicken, Leftists ask their share,
Yet Rightists clutch the spigot, firm and cold —
Not just in dunes where camels tread with care,
But boardrooms where the new crusades are sold.
The maps they draw in ink of liquid gold
Still bleed like wounds that never learned to knit.
Each barrel priced, each treaty bought and signed,
Yet ancient grudges fester, unconfined.

The West once carved the feast with steady knives,
But now the plates are cracked, the guests revolt —
Some scream for walls, some beg for homeless hives,
While deep beneath, the drills still twist and bolt.
Here comes the Holy Land - a bleakest jot,
Where prophets weep at profits dearly bought.
And Christ is preaching not on love or grace,
But quotas, pipelines, and who gets what place.
But Son of God himself by strange decree
Stands homeless where he preached “Come unto Me.”

15

UNESCO, with its crooked left 'politess',
Declared the Temple Mount not Israel's right.
And Canada with Russia voted "Yes!"
While Europe coughed and shrank out of the sight.
It's strange when Russia's stance align with that
of maple-leaf moralists so pure and trite.
Perhaps they played some deeper game instead -
Fed fools the rope to hang themselves with pride.
Lavrov might smirk, "Who cares what's wrong or right?
Let's vote for chaos - watch the baassstarrds slide!"

Now Trudeau won't set foot on Jewish land,
While Hamas's praised, the IDF's condemned.
But what's this got to do with chess, you ask?
The threads connect - just trace them to the task!

16

So, Drukletch stormed in, fury in his eyes,
Two damning charges, sharp as battle cries:

"Zurab himself defiled our sacred rule!
Last time he flaunted shorts himself — so cruel!
Here is that photo - if you trust your eyes -
Those shameless knees expose their master's lies!"
The tournament hall, once prim, now gaped in shock,  
As chess tradition crumbled 'neath this frock.

"And second — mark this plot, so sly and dire —
He schemed with Max Rodshtein, that Israeli liar!
When Kovalyov received this reprimand,
Rodshtein did claim his win by Zurab's hand!"

17

The camera's lenze caught that very scene
Where Zurab clashed with Kovalyev Anton —
Behind his back, so real and serene,
The Jewish flag unfurled it's hexagon.
Was it pure chance or some malicious craft?
We may dispute for ages as we see
That irony is flawless in its art —
To stir the doubt, yet hide the guilty part.

And Maxim Rodshtein — what’s his voice to this?
Zip. Nada. None, or so the silence tells.
He’s mute as stone, no stance to curse nor hiss,
His thoughts lie hushed in deep, uncharted wells.
His statement might have cleared the foggy mess —
Perhaps a quip where wry amusement dwells:
“I, Maxim, swear, on all that’s been debated,
I’ve naught to say - and thus stay unberated.”

18

When Drukletch dropped his shit, unhinged and loud,
Maxim, perchance, just smirked beneath his breath —
And thought: “These crazy fools have lost their ground",
And mused, while dodging scandal’s creeping mess.
Was he, too, in shorts, blending with the crowd?
He slipped in early, missing Gzhegosh’s eye,
And whispered humbly to Zurab about
His sin and swore to make amends or die.
Or not. Perchance instead he bided time,
Till eyes turned blind, and then he fixed his crime.

Imagine this: when not observed by jury
He popped his belt, let shorts sag low and free—
Dashed to his quarters, swift as fleeting fury,
And slid into fresh pants for all to see.
Then sauntered back as if returned from jerry,
And calmly waited how the pantsless mess
Unfolds - True whizz of sneaky moves and shady chess.

19

Of course, he blew it — mute, he stands accused,
A silence thick with fault, a rookie’s sin —
No star up high turns random, unexcused,
When chess and junk from youtube fill their din.
We - slaves of FIDE, time’s obsessive kin, -
Find solace in the board’s eternal grind,
Yet heavens spill a truth no app can bind.

From stellar drift, our souls snag cosmic crumbs,
A science feast where fans like us abide —
Each orbit track unveils existence’s sums,
A rock from space could crush a species wide,
Or bare the Chess Union’s throne, once ruled
By old-school titan, grizzled, grand, and sly,
Since days when knights and kings refused to die.

The plot twists hard, two tangled farces join!
Two Europes clash — one freaks at Israel’s claims,
The next, per Zurab's hand, awards it points,
GM-OLD-TITAN gambits double game!
And that's a place where I have to proclaim -
(I hope, my friend, you safely sit on cushions) -
That Kovalyev and Rodshtain - both are Russians,
Like Zurab, Gzrghegozsh, Drukletch, you and me,
Whichever rugs you hoist on guilty knee.
But even if this chess is a complex game,
There is no cause to quit the hunt for who’s to blame.

20

I lift my eyes — cheap telescope in hand —
(Black Friday deal, now half in coffee rust ) -
To scan the heavens where the gods once lived
A clockwork sphere, both elegant and just.
But no! The sky’s a glitching simulation,
A cosmic joke beyond verification.

The 3-b problem laughs — its dance malign
Mocks supercomps and makes them crash outright.
While black holes, like some crypto-scheme divine,
Suckk matter in and vanish out of sight.
And every week, some space-tool’s revelation
Just adds more trash to scientists' frustration.

The theorists weep (their models are so neat),
Now watch dark energy their work erase.
The universe cares not for their conceit —
It shrinks, expands, and memes right in our face.
The flat-Earthers beliefs are nice to keep!
At least they never lose a wink of sleep.

I hope they don't. And so do I. Indeed,
The Brownian churn of facts will lead
to nowhere. For mind's sake I need some order,
I need to find myself on someone’s border
To get involved in real life's galore
Where shorts defend their truth, and trousers soar.

21

Look at the great and blind machine of life,
That's called 'the evolution'. With no plan,
No grand design, no meaning in the strife,
it's creatures fight. For what? - Because they can.
Yet from this carnage we, like plants, emerged —
through wars, and plagues, and famine neatly purged.

Life’s blind fists scrabble through time’s suckkkingggg* mire,
With no grand scheme or plan to light its way.
No goal, no guide — just chance’s old desire,  
Where cells just splice and rot in Darwin’s gear.
They split, they clash, they fight in endless roll,
And do not know why do they live at all.
  
Life’s vivid pulse is carved from pain’s harsh sting,  
Survival forged in shadows of despair.  
Each wound, each war, each plague’s unyielding spring  
Sharpens the blade of life’s relentless lair.  
Dare to erase the rot, the fang, the claw?
In vain. The fangs just sharpen, craving more.

We boast we’re not like beasts, blind to the fray,  
Our minds, we claim, can carve a flawless state.  
With logic’s torch, we’ll chase all vice away,  
And moral codes will banish every hate.  
Yet smug, we scorn the sludge where life’s begun,  
Convinced we’re gods, not fools who chase the sun.

We say - let the economists hold sway,  
While math whiiizzz minds make finances align.  
Philosophers, who swear they’ve found the way,  
Will purge all wrong with Marxist truth divine.  
But pride infects their hearts, a fatal flaw —  
Their zeal breeds ruin, shattering the law.

When brainiacs seize the power, chains arise,  
The world morphs fast into a prison’s gloom.  
Wars rage so fierce, the death toll blinds the skies,  
While taxes crush and cleave the social room.  
The more they plan, the more the world rebels,
And feeds the very hells they sought to quell.

Watching this circus of brain-power frays,
Where ivy-league bacilli sheit* their pants,
I won’t pose as some sage or cuantt who stays
Above the brawl. No coward’s sheitt, my friends.
Feeling myself a part of nature's law,
I always pick a side in every war.

22

I stand with Israel, Trump, Fide and Jesus -
that one of eastern Orthodox edition.
The void of saints and sinners sits between us,  
or "readers" - I should say - and this petition -
like modern Moses' tablets' audition -
is craving for your sacred recognition:

Go fuuckck yourself with any crap you own!
I do not care… or do I? Hard to tell.
My veins are Red Bull buzz, emotions blown,
A clown in life’s circus, yelling 'hell'!  
Like I’ve pants down and stand right here, felled,
Waiting for love — or Zurab's leather belt.

And so I wish you too, dear wasted reader,
(Gorged on the trash the internet excretes),
May life be tournament — be it FIDE or tweeter—
And bruise you hard, yet leave you weirdly freed.
A twisted prize from this digital bleeder,  
Served hot, with middle fingers as your leader.  

I'll go get scammed by crypto’s latest fad,
Or doomscroll news that fry my last brain cell.
Cry on no hill — all hills are good and bad.
But if you’re yelling at the void - yell well:
Let hope ignite where broken life still glows
And screams for love that vanished.

Smooches, bros!