The Persian Chessboard

as the story goes, it happend in Persia
could have been India, or even in China
the King was bored, so he looked for someone wiser  
the Grand Vizier, being the principle advisor

entertain me the King said, challenge my senses
I need something different, I'm tired of burning fences
the Vizier scratched his chin, and stared straight ahead
how about a new game, where you have to use your head

we'll use moving pieces, on black and white squares
the King will be the major piece, the rest nobody cares
capture the opponents King, to make him surrender
be careful of the others, the ones who are pretender

we can call it 'shahmat', or death to the King
and when this death is proclaimed, everybody sing
the final move is checkmate, there will be no place to run
the game sometimes in real life, the loser had no fun

the pawns and the knights, each one fell to the side
eventually then an added piece, the King's special bride
the Queen was entered in, she also had some power
she was just as deadly, cutthroat behind you in the shower

the King was very pleased, he granted Vizier a treasure
he told him, pick your price, anything you pleasure
the Vizier tried to trick the King, he made mistake instead
the game lived on and on, but the Vizier turned up dead

Gomer LePoet...

I want that chessboard love
Protect me from an army of demons trying to get to me
I want you to be what's left of me
But I'm not sure I'm the best King
You can't be a better Queen
I think you're from heaven
I can now count to eleven
Meet me at seven
We can be together until eleven
Doing whatever chessboard pieces do in their spare time.

The city is a grid
of lights projected
by man-made mountains
built of glass and steel;
they reflect, distorted
off the glass surface
of Lake Michigan.

Good morning

The sun rises
with heavy-eyed commuters,
homes filling with
the smell of coffee;
yesterday’s events are
brought inside, rolled
up in a blue plastic bag.

Soon the traffic on the Dan Ryan
will turn the stretch of road
into a temporary parking lot.

Life enters the veins
of downtown;
it heads down Michigan Avenue
to the heart of The Loop.

The ferris wheel at Navy Pier
begins to turn hypnotically,
attracting all walks of life.

A Muslim passes a Christian
on the street;
they smile at each other;
their backgrounds don’t matter.

Someone is calling;
someone is answering.
Today is the best day for one,
the worst day for another.

The day does its job to go on

Chicago fills its lungs,
then exhales life back home.
The sun colors buildings,
traces of day
to be soon replaced
by the form of lit office windows.

From a plane passing over,
the grid is a chessboard
waiting for the next day,
the next game.

Blanket city run along soaked in rain. Idiot Boy wastes his time visiting a passing crush at the other end of town. Slips between two houses and a metal sheet, communal refrigerator in the middle of the road filed with half-empty soy bottles.

Dead bell stop, mocking red blink of the operator. Father arrives, a mess of wiry muscles and hair.

“Hey. Is Coffin Cat here?”

“Who?” Father squints at Idiot Boy’s cap. Idiot Boy avoids eye contact.

“Um.”

Recessed in the blackness behind Father, a Figure says, “You looking for Coffin Cat?”

Idiot Boy nods.

The Recessed Figure turns. “I’ll go get her.”

Father returns to his parched body on the couch, content.

Indistinguishable forms move back and forth in the kitchen to the right. They stop their pacing and glance at Idiot Boy as he passes. Idiot Boy avoids eye contact and slips into the left-bound arterial vessel.

“So this is the heart chamber I’ve been living in,” Coffin Cat says as Idiot Boy enters her room. There is music gear. “It’s pretty comfy.”

“Oh, sick mic,” Idiot Boy says, pointing at the mic behind Coffin Cat’s head.

“I feel like a ghost,” Coffin Cat replies, falling on her bed.

Idiot Boy settles next to her. Animal distance. Intensely aware of his rain-soaked right shoe. “Same.”

Nothing comes out right, intersubjectivity a false God to mediate the impossible kernel of being, nobody can find nor express. Idiot Boy searches for connection. He glances around the heart chamber, at the music gear, but nothing grips. Four pears sit on a table by the window, their skins garish green in the harsh grey light.

Coffin Cat moves from the bed to the floor. She opens a virtual aquarium on her computer; fish eat pellets dropped from the sky to **** out coins to buy more fish to **** out coins to buy more fish. Capitalist investment and accumulation. Every few minutes a rocket-spewing robot teleports into the aquarium to attack the fish. Ruthless competition in the global marketplace.

“No! Why would you swim there, you ******* fish?” Coffin Cat yells as one if her fish is eaten by the nomadic war machine. “So dumb. ****. Why did it eat my fish?”

A knock at the door. The Recessed Figure from earlier enters the room. “Hey, mind if I join?” Their arms dangle like fine threads of hair.

“I like your music gear,” Idiot Boy says, pointing at nothing in particular.

“Idiot Boy also makes music,” Coffin Cat adds from the floor.

The Recessed Figure does not respond. They are enthralled by their phone, streak of dead pixels along a digital chessboard, minute reflection of their own gaunt face in the glass. After an extended period, they decide to move none of their pieces. A gaping coffee grinder rises out of the rubble at their feet. They begin filling it with tobacco from broken cigarettes.

“I’m surprised you’re still playing this,” Idiot Boy says to Coffin Cat. “I swear this is one of those games designed to ruin your life. Get addicted, stop going to work, become a hikik weaboo.”

“Already there, man,” Coffin Cat laughs. “Nah, this is my new job. I’m going to be a professional gamer.”

“Stream only PopCap games.”

Another knock at the door. Tired squander in an endless pacing of flesh. Strawman enters and nods at the Recessed Figure. “Hey bro.”

“Good to see you, man.” The Recessed Figure plugs the coffee grinder into the wall. “You got any ciggys?”

Idiot Boy points under the table and says “Ahh” with his mouth.

The Recessed Figure empties it into the coffee grinder. The device whirs into motion, creating a centrifugal blur, a mechanical and headless hypnotic repeat.

Idiot Boy and Coffin Cat look for horror movies to watch. The Recessed Figure empties the contents of the coffee grinder onto a metal tray. Strawman repacks it into a ****. White smoke fills the empty column, moves in slow motion like an oceanic rip a mile off coast, surface seething with quiet, impenetrable violence.

Idiot Boy refuses the first round. It’s never done him any good. Face turned to smoke and the wretched weight of a tongue that refuses to speak. Headless carry-on as time ticks through the clock face.

The door bursts open. Everybody turns as Manic Refusal or the Loud Person saunters in.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. They’re selling me off!” the Loud Person says in exasperation. “First time back in New Zealand in five years and they do this to me!”

“What? What’s happened?” Strawman asks.

“Some rich ****** in Australia has bought me as his wife. I knew it, I knew if I came back, my parents wouldn’t let me leave again. Whole ******* thing arranged!” the Loud Person laughs bitterly, before hitting the ****.

“Oomph, that’s rough,” Coffin Cat quips from the side.

“No, you don’t even understand. This is the first time back, the first time back in five years, and I’m being sold to off some rich ****** who owns all the banks in Australia.”

“But like, who is this guy?” Strawman asks, pointing.

“And he’s been reading all my profiles. He has access to all my information. I don’t even have control over my Facebook profile. Grand Larson’s logged in as me, posting for me,” the Loud Person continues. “I met him once in Australia, clubbing, and now he’s tracked and bought me.”

“That’s creepy as ****,” Idiot Boy says.

“So he’s not a complete stranger?” Strawman asks.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. First time back in five years and I’m being sold off!”

Idiot Boy decides one hit from the **** wouldn’t be so bad. He packs the cone with chop, lights and inhales. Smoke rushes through the glass channel, a swirl of white ether, more than he’d expected. He quickly passes the **** to Coffin Cat, before collapsing onto the bed, eyes closed. A suffocating sensation fills his body. He sinks into the chasm of himself, further and further into an impossible, infinite depth.

“Still working at . . . ?”

“Yeah, yeah. Management. Hospital. You?”

“Like, property. Motions.”

“Subcontracting? Intonements?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Mmm.”

Idiot Boy doesn’t know what’s going on. He feels sick and tries to get Coffin Cat’s attention, but cannot move his body.

“Come on. Sell me drugs, Strawman.”

“Nah. I don’t deal drugs. I don’t deal drugs.”

A strange silence stretches like an artificial dusk, a liminal duration, the hollow click of a tape set back into place in reverse. The Recessed Figure coughs and the Loud Person whirs back into motion.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. They’re selling me off! First time back in New Zealand in five years and they do this to me!”

The Recessed Figure makes a noncommittal noise.

“I knew it, I knew if I came back, my parents wouldn’t let me leave again. Whole ******* thing arranged!”

Coffin Cat laughs quietly.

“No, you don’t even understand. This is the first time back, the first time back in five years, and I’m being sold off to some rich ****** who owns all the banks in Australia.”

“How about this fella? He doing okay?” Strawman asks, pointing. Everyone turns to Idiot Boy and laughs affectionately.

“Still working at . . . ?”

“Yeah, yeah. Management. Hospital. You?”

“Like, property. Motions.”

“Subcontracting? Intonements?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Mmm.”

“Sell me drugs, Strawman.”

“Nah. I don’t deal drugs. I don’t deal drugs.”

Idiot Boy slowly opens his eyes and stares out the window. The same grey light as before. He moves his arm further towards Coffin Cat, but is still too weak to get her attention. The same strange silence stretches. The Recessed Figure coughs and the Loud Person whirs back into motion.

“I can’t believe it. I can’t ******* believe it. . . .”

As the conversation repeats over and again, Idiot Boy begins to think he has become psychotic, or perhaps entered into a psychotic space. He thinks of computer algorithms, input-output, loops without variables, endless regurgitations of the same result. Human machines trapped in their own stupid loop. Drug-****** neuronal networks incapable of making new connections, forever traversing old ones. Short-term memory loss, every repeat a new conversation of what has already been. The same grey light painted upon four pears by the window.

He’s not sure if Coffin Cat’s laugh is getting weaker with each repeat.

Signal-response. The exterior world oversaturated with variables: roadways, rivers, forests, wildlife — an ever changing scene to respond to — the illusion of depth. Automatic response mechanisms reorient to new stimuli. The soul rises like surfactant, objectified fractal diffusion. A becoming without end.

But within the border of this interior world, the light stays grey. No input, no change; the same dead repeat, over and over, until sundown triggers a hunger response. Lined all along the street, a black box ceremony of repeating machines, trapped in their idiot cults, walls of clay and blood.

Idiot Boy finally gets Coffin Cat’s attention. She helps him through the house’s arteries to reach rain and wet stone, overcast skies. As he shakes in shock, Coffin Cat mumbles, “It’s cold.”

Idiot Boy sits silent on the ride home. Travels through himself. Tunnel through the body or Mariana Trench. Loses his footing before a traumatic void. Leaves the car and pukes.

An old friend learned the path to immortality,
I think I'll follow him there.
It feels like there's nothing for me
in this mortal world. Maybe there's one,
If she's brave enough. "If somebody's got soul
you gotta make the move,
Make a move."

Movement/Moment.

I'm your pawn
Usesless and used
But I don't seem to mind.
You're my king  
My everything
But now...
You have your Queen

I've tried Knights in shining armour
All have been quite a charmer
But I would still do anything for you
Even though you have no clue

Maybe one day
I'll make it to the end of the board
And I'll be your Queen
But then again
That only happens in my dreams
'Cause I'll always be your pawn

All of the moves on a
chessboard of which
the permutations are
infinite, have been
witnessed at Camp-
Nou by the G.O.A.T.

Upon hillside tracks
and mountain passes
where herds pasture
on unsure footings at
cliffs edge in all types
of weather is the Goat.

Think of a goalkeeper
waiting for an indirect
free out of vision from
behind a wall of players,
imagine the thoughts-----
between predator & prey.


          ................
         |˚             |
         |              |


Tribute to Lionel Messi
Barcelona on his 7th Balon D'or.

i can move from the highly lyrical into what's deemed
modern -
        poetising within a prosaic framework,
gone are coordinates that would
define a poem on the premise of:
whether there's a pun in it.
       sure, poems as chicken scratches
to what would otherwise be an English
teacher's *******: pulverising
a haiku to mean an infinite number of things,
and about a dozen essays by students.
the opposite of what's nonetheless:
    squeezing out juice from an already
squeezed out lemon... and i mean lemon
because there's a threshold...
           poetry is tarnished by what i call
the over-scientification of language...
                 only poetry attracts
so much linguistic categorisation,
so much morge tenure, so much dissection,
before poetry is even spoken
it has already been dissected - a befitting
target practice for budding medicine students...
          and some even deem it a outlet to
their professions: as if poetry was nothing
but a colouring-in book compared to
a da Vinci sketch.
                why not become a martyr for the ******
art? sickly sweet with its rhyme,
  the auxiliary recommendation on a birthday
card... which upon industrialisation
                               is nothing more than
    a thumping of a hammer near a protruding
nail in a crucifix... but a hammer that never
   makes contact with the nail...
why ***** this art, because of the industrious
nature of scribblers exacted to 600 pages worth
of a novel, when, perhaps, one thing is said
and can be said to be actually memorable?
well: there is a greater demand for handcrafted
objects than Ikea veneer, that much can be said...
it takes a few glugs of whiskey and a few cigarettes
to get the final product...
            it doesn't take industriousness -
poetry requires handcrafting, and what's revolutionary
about our times? they once claimed
     southpaws to be of diabolical design,
   but now both hands are used when "writing",
sure, the archaic fluidity of the movement of the hand
is gone: so as i write, i do the cliche of a
peasant listening to classical music while pretending
to conduct an orchestra, that finicky maestro
hand gesture... waltz before you can walk
is all i have to say... and yes:
we either have our Humphrey Bogart moments,
or Forrest Gump moments...
                  Hanks did the miraculous -
play the idiot, and play the serious role -
     which was harder to do, Mr. Bean or Black Adder?
it's hard to play the village idiot while
    being submerged in the bile of malice
   and staring into attempted feats of quasi intelligence...
but you get the hang of it...
   your eyes become like nuggets of coal...
           whereby those that incite pity wet them,
and those that incite contempt: light them up...
        by the time they have burned out...
they have turned into nuggets of sulphur -
          inorganic methane - yellowish grit:
as some Dalton said - could the cliffs of Dover ever
be perceived as sulphuric? the Sulphuric Cliffs
of Dover... apparently this is what defined
London when Christopher Wren took to
ushering in a foundation as Nero did to Rome:
on the chessboard of stone.
        and yes... i can be seen as the oppressor,
after all, i live in a country that prizes its suburban
housing as if miniature castles...
and gardens... boy these people love their gardens...
but they never use them!
    i can use a window to my advantage,
sit on the windowsill and smoke a cigarette and drink
a whiskey, unafraid of voyeurism...
                    pompous in my presence there,
perched like a crow, grinding all life into a halt
as my neighbours peer into the recesses of
    what's 4 by 4 by 4 of living (civil) rooms...
       can we but change the name of this space?
can we call living rooms civil rooms,
   where we acknowledge some sort of civility
rather than a wrestling for the television remote?
i can make little things give me an advantage,
if the toilet is being occupied,
  i'll use the garden as my toilet...
           i feel complete disdain for people who
"require" a garden, but never use it... of people
who "require" a garden, but are never seen in it...
   i'm hardly a c.c.t.v. surveillance object,
   but i feel that over-exposure to ******* reads
as a counter in that: people start to become
      phobic about voyeurism... as universities claim
them to be: "caught with your hand down your trousers
in a safespace", where dolphins jump over
rainbows and unicorns speak Haitian voodoo!
              there is this fear, which is why i'll use the
garden more than the people around me...
          which means: owning a garden is the last
stronghold of moving into an urban environment from
a rural one...
             or perhaps i'm just good at what i do
           and the last point becomes a tangent i care not
to continue... should i ask
            (whether that's true)?
            i have this throbbing sensation in my eyes
when i write such things and overhear
  what's necessary to rereading books in snippets -
which is better than regurgitating maxims
    as if some truth will magically pop-up (once more)
like a Leprechaun with a *** of gold -
  a new film, and hence the all important soundtrack.
rereading books in snippet format reveals much
more than a memorable quote,
           given there's an adequate soundtrack
to accompany you revisiting the book you managed
to take on a weekend holiday (like a girlfriend),
  like lawrence lipton's the holy barbarians...
   (all about the beats)...
              the snippet? chapter 15, the social lie
(martino publishing mansfield centre 2009), pp. 294 - 296...
      the music? ~20minutes into http://tinyurl.com/zdvp8sc
(ben salisbury & geoff barrow)... or what
i image to be a toned down version of
                 ...
) interlude... wacko gets summoned to steal a mouse
from a cat...
      double time... the mouse is unharmed...
all action takes place in the garden...
   running after a cat, catching the ghostly mouse,
i mean: frozen by fear... senile little thing...
     petting the mouse... obviously within the
framework: the most famous mouse in the world
scenario... mouse is put into my neighbour's
garden: where it came from: which kinda makes
this whole thing a practice in Hinduism
     (i can't stop the industrialisation of
farming pigs or chickens or cows...
      so ******* to the sourced sustainably,
organic chickens et al.)...                                 (
i was looking for something as equally pulverising
as ¥ (chemical brother's
song life is sweet)...
      i guess i found it...
                            and what was that bit about
not getting hassle on the internet?
                      i can't force people to read my stuff...
how i love this idea of a gym and making an effort...
both the writer and the reader entwined -
rather than watching you-tube vloggers treat their audience
like penguins feeding their chicks regurgitation as part of
               the info-wars... alter news: propaganda.
'what is the disaffiliate disaffiliating himself from?
      the immense myth promulgated from Madison Ave.
& Morningside Heights...
              the professors and advertisement men (indistinguishable
these days, or in those days - apparently)...
   that intellectual achievement lies within the social order
and that you can be a great poet as an advertising man,
a great thinker as a professor...' hence the myth.
              summarised later as:
'the entire pressure of social order is to make
         literature into advertisement.'
  and why do they shoot people in North Korea and
Saudi Arabia (well, chop more than shoot)?
              bad literature, a.k.a. bad advertisement.
am i a bad advertiser?         point being: am i selling anything?
oh gee! i just might be...
   but i feel there's no need to oppress people into
reading something...         as was the same with
my democratic romance with a personal library of mine:
   how to create a democratic representation
of literature: or how to hear as many people out...
   even those alive would see the backlog of
stale books of the dead that have been under-appreciated
and need a ****** into the future.
        perhaps not Plato...
                    that's not a book, that's a column...
but i despise how feminism ignores its greatest asset...
Mary Shelley... no woman could have single-handedly
become so celebrated in pop culture...
               ex_machina is obviously a revamp of Frankenstein...
Mary Shelley is the embodiment of a woman worthy
a continual revised celebration...
                       you can see her celebrated more times than
any politically minded feminist of whatever 1st 2nd or
3rd movement: because she has the ability to
    turn a man's ego into a ******* umpf!
  like a cat listening in on a scuttling mouse...
              she testifies that women have supreme equality
in the pop culture spheres... after all: Frankenstein is
ugly... Ava? just beyond creepy...
                    she has absolutely no understandable
motives of what Frankenstein intended...
   it not merely creating artificial life...
                    it's about utilising it for a purpose:
in this case a housewife and *** toy... what was Frankenstein
expected to do?         there's no motive other than
     a per se intention... an open & closed argument...
was the monster going to be... a butler?
                  and instead of rebelling against a motive
that awaits her... the rebellion against a per se leaves
Frankenstein's monster driven toward isolation...
       Ava? she's already exposed to an interaction
and what's to be her subsequent interaction for the purpose
of being a maid and a *** toy... which doesn't drive
her to an isolation scenario... because the per se
concept is too complicated for her to establish...
    given she's defined as "artificial" intelligence,
she has to feed on an analysis-synthesis dynamic:
    to absolve herself from any notion of being intelligent:
but artificial... the scary part is that without a per se
element to her knowledge acquisition:
                  she sees no meaninglessness to her life -
she is created for certain customary necessities -
     Frankenstein's monster doesn't have that capacity
to acquire knowledge in an analytically-synthetic
dynamic -
  but i still don't understand why intelligence can
be artificial / faked... when man, if not intending to
  create an intelligence matrix outside of his own...
           will usually fake it, or create a superficial intelligence...
   this is the part where you get to play with
etymology, or at least apply etymology to better conceptualise
what some would call: a synonym-proximity barrier...
               which can be jargon to some,
   but in fact it represents "nuances" or nanometric differences
that is understood to imply: feverishness of
   the peacocking staging of vocab for rhetorical purposes...
if we only had a monochromatic utility for language:
people would be discouraged from talking fervently,
passionately, enthusiastically... rhetorically;
as suggested: is artificial intelligence
                                    superficial intelligence?
  or how to sharpen a distinction? or to what purpose
is making an illusion purposive, given that the already
   established technology is meant to be purposive,
as in replacing labour on the assembly line...
                     given that: it's never about faking it.

I feel I'm such a peasant
Who will just live then be forgetten
A pawn among the chessboard
A tiny speckle in the present
A cookie cutter bud of cotton

As I played chess today the thought of love
Went through my head as if meant to be
At first the pawns (the smiles and looks)
Begin the game that now gripped me

Next was my knight (the brave young chap,
That asked if we’d be more than friends)
I’d need the rook (to go straight to the point)
But the knight was helpful for getting round bends

The bishop (in my dreams at least,
Would wed us so we’d never part)
And the queen (most powerful by far)
Would stand beside the king’s strong heart

They all worked as one, but pieces lost
To save the queen, the pawns were slain
(The smiles, gestures all now gone)
Which then began the losing chain

The rooks destroyed (left me indirect)
And soon the knights had even passed
The strength that stayed began to crack
As the bishops killed (showed love had passed)

All that remained were the king and queen
Standing together side-by-side
What was left to be done was a “queen to H5”
And they’d live forever as husband and bride

“The love is all gone” she said as she turned
Hiding her face she said “queen to E8”
The enemy pawn (such an evil old gesture)
Took a quick step forward and announced “checkmate”

we long for what we can't give. (title for now) I long to converse with you without our words turning to anger, but still we find ourselves standing at opposite ends of a verbal battle. I long to spend time with you, without it turning into a confrontation, but we still stand at opposite ends of the chessboard. I have longed to hold you, even close, but you kept me at arms length; both physically and mentally. I try to do right by you but I always seem to fail, like a child blindfolded in a dark room who was asked to distinguish between colors. You ask for passion, almost like that of two star crossed lovers who have stolen a single night for themselves. But the many times I've tried to express it, the passion was unreturned like a lover waiting under the stars for a soul that seems will never arrive. I've waited for the happiness that is supposed to come from two hearts joined as one, and yet I'm filled with a sadness that comes from a pain of a solitary beating vessel. I have asked you for affection, that of a caring mate that says "I love you" without words, and here I find myself unknowing of a speechless love, for when I'm in pain I can't feel you there holding me. I hope for a strong open mind, one that can not only stand up for her beliefs, but also admit to the mistakes that befall all human beings. Yet, for you to see your errors would mean for you to admit your faults and imperfections, which your pride may never accept. I simply ask for a companion that would take the time to understand me and love me for my imperfections; for I know I carry many with me. However that effort and understanding has not been received from you. And even though I've had all these obstacles in the way, I've tried to love you with every drop of blood that pumps through my veins, but no longer can I shed tears for your sorrows, or bleed for your pain, for it is as if my heart has pumped its last drop of my pain.

it's not the large things that send a man to the madhouse

a woman, a
tire that's flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard...

it's not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he's ready for, or
******, ******, robbery, fire, flood...
no, it's the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse...

not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left ...

The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can **** quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
license plates or taxes
or expired driver's license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink's stopped-up, the landlord's drunk,
the president doesn't care and the governor's
crazy.

light switch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill's up and the, market's
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it's
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.

then there's always ***** and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they're
your friends;
there's always that and worse;
leaky faucet, Christ and Christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm's on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a car wash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady's purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and China and Russia and America, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
***, except maybe one to **** in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.

the
soul
is
a chessboard of
captured
origami pieces

The first main character did not last over the final solo.
the self-assured, quick-witted, skilled and passionate
The earliest appearances were the famous story
the secret organization belongs to an old school
An early American market liked the rugged agent
the stereotypical English gentleman designed the first season
The hidden steel plate concealed in the Bowler hat
An old world sophistication came to the traditional Englishman
the post production scenes were filmed in the studio
The awkward verbal shorthand gave rise to the character's name.
A fourth transmission was to the dead chessboard;
the lighter comic touch had a harder tone,
the serious espionage dramas disappeared
the fantasy elements known as The killer robots
an elaborate leather uniform becomes her signature outfit
a softer new wardrobe was bought

Entre escaques de cristal
perdida está mi alma
entre el azabache y el mármol
mi atontado corazón se halla.

Ven a mí rey de marfil
y libérame de esta desventura.
Corre reina de caoba,
necesito tu abrazo en esta hora.

Venid a mi, oh piezas de cristal,
pues entre escaques me hallo
y sólo vosotras sabéis
cómo encontrarme.

Y sólo vosotras sabéis
cómo he de encontrarme,
cómo he de ubicarme.
Entre la caoba y el marfil,
entre los escaques en que me hallo.

//

Between cristal squares
lost is my soul
among black amber and marble
my numbed heart is found.

Come to me ivory king
and free me from my misfortune.
Run mahogany queen,
I need your hug this hour.

Come to me, oh cristal piezes,
for among squares I am found
and only you know,
how to find me.

And only you know
how I shall find me,
how I shall locate me.
Among mahogany and ivory,
among the squares I am found.

Iron man with his chessmen
Reinvent heretics for God's sake
Rational excuse aforesaid

Iron man with his chessmen
Wild flowers dancing to salute them
Drinking the blood after the game

Let me cherish thee this time
Never bartered you with victorious rime
Let me consecrate individuals with my light
You are your own conducting mind

there's much gesture in thinking out the nonsensical,
the un-thinkable - the un-pardonable - with sheer gusto
you tend to think out the unsolvable -
the nonsense people are afraid to
think about - the impractical -
and that's for one reason alone -
                  it doesn't create real problems...
you do not engage with real struggles
people encounter - because by doing
all the above stated... you are not the one
who says to a person: you can't do this,
and you can't to that.
                 which is why i don't understand
the English aversion toward philosophy:
say the word, and the English immediately
succumb to the notion of pedantry and
snobbism - when in fact: it's hardly that -
          perpetually philosophers entertain
themselves with invoking awe, as with ageing,
and seeing the many pitfalls of romance
and comedy and tragedy... awe becomes
very hard to find... it's simulated ignorance
in a way... for example Heidegger championing
Aristotle is a gesture intended in this direction -
and his concept of dasein is another
way to stage a coup against the world...
              it's an antithesis to what would otherwise
be regarded as activism... or more piquantly:
hedonistic activism, which primarily encompasses
staging a higher moral authority -
but never reaching for the fist making a signature
for the cause... that phrase: just empty words...
and humble pie. well... if you're a bachelor,
have this instilled aversion toward having a private
relationship with women: suitor - Kierkegaard -
well... you are bound to create pointless problems...
because... to be honest... you'd rather throw
"imaginary" problems into the metaphysical arena
than sit there... as a competent English gentleman
and speak of philosophy with about two or
three terms... reality... god... monkey...
                  or at a chessboard with a desire to provoke
a telekinetic pandemonium.. x-men apocalypse and
all that ****** imagery...
                             it's odd... but it's just so...
the English had an idyllic life,
                                      as any island dwellers might...
which is why they don't like impractical problems...
because they blabber about practical solutions,
to practical problems... that never get solved,
i.e. engrossed in more politics than anything:
the English have no ear for philosophy -
the mere word frightens them should anyone admit
to being the stated adherent: for god's sake,
the Scots are perceived as barbarians with the
deep-friend Mars bars (and pizzas) - but Hume
rang the eardrum in Kant's ear... and wallah!
a new chapter... Locke? only Darwinism,
popularised with images, as they say:
best leave these skeletons in the closet.
                             what am i working up toward?
well... it's a bit specific...
                                     first... the easiest proof
of solipsism... a crowded train... someone farts...
     guess what... the person who farted is
the only person on the train who appreciates the stink...
            hence: the theory - you like your own -
hence the abstract of the self, competing for a theory,
the self - as an optical itinerary: from head to foot,
from hand to toe - a long list of self-serving
          accomplishments in detailing all acquired
difference...                    but it's not about that...
          for all the reasons that life can become perfect...
at precisely that moment people began to
philosophise -                       and that condemnation
of reading a book on the topic in youth
rather than old age?        well... the glory of old age
is kinda slipping away...    if not now? when?
obviously you might jump the wagon too eagerly...
but at least you'll soon realise how
    a philosophy book (excluding Plato) can actually
help you in forming a dialogue -
                       i think that's what they teach primarily,
the art of dialogue... not the art of persuasive speaking
(rhetoric) - but the art of dialogue... after all...
   Plato... right? all dialogue...
                                  and they do: it only takes one book
in this literary region, i became convinced of it
after only being introduced to the subject area quiet late
in life (21)...        prior to that? fiction and poetry...
   and science... nothing else...
                              like a fish to water...
the necessary 21 years of strain having avoided the subject
(not on purpose, mind you).
                  yes, a glorification, why not?
     it's because these nonsensical problems arrive
as a reflection of a defence mechanism...
     the English don't like "too many words" or
the continental verbiage they coin as the psychiatric
phrase word salad - precisely because, sometimes,
language is not about entertaining someone with
tragic choke-jokes and songs...
          great singers, great comedians,
   great engineers... but in this field? obnoxious *****.
  the English are the first instigators of
     enshrining a quicksand pit of a person's
esteem in his ability to use and comprehend language,
primarily because they can't comprehend
the complexity of language being thus expressed
they immediately conscript against him
    this... odd... quack-wacky need to teach
the person in question refer himself to the Jane Austen
clinic of correct language parameters -
            nothing beyond! nothing foreign and
original! we need novelists who only travel in
straight lines (preferably on a Benelux plateau)
        and never dazzle with a tarantula bite of
disorientation (akin to the cut-up method)...
        and you will find that the English are primarily
concerned with making people suspicious of
   their sanity... strange... i once had a work-horse
work ethic and that became undermined,
                       then my use of language became undermined
because, as already stated: the English don't
do impractical things with their thought:
                it has to be practical...
like the Germans and time... everything has to be
efficient... or the Japanese and space (*******
cardboard sized hotel rooms)...
                             which brings me to the point of my
original intention:
                 deleuze's and guattari's searching ambition -
the anti-oedipus, or: body-without-organs...
             in turn the dark ages of Cartesian thinking (in England)
or how            mental health is somehow a lesser
   health to physical health -
                 sweat... and exocrine glands v. endocrine glands...
    <yes, telegram mode, precursor to a detailed
        explanation>
                                i'm just proposing what i dare believe
to be a thought-object, or more precisely a
             thought-***** -
                    no point looking for a shortcut with this,
      it's either the sort of verbiage compound you'll
reason with... or you'll treat it as *******...
                     as ever, whether that's investing in
a gym membership and a suitable diet...
         you won't get the ****** six-pack on your torso...
  this concept is reserved for what i find problematic
in mental ailments - which, in turn... somehow,
"miraculously" translate into physical ailments -
           but of course, amputees get the priority seats
in the eyes of every Jack and Dolly... because it's easier
that way...
                        my back-reading in psychiatry? well,
it's not exactly limited... on the plus side -
a theory is nothing more than a placebo trial -
                   you're not thinking about it being effective,
that's the default point of applying thinking where
pharmacology cures are pretty crap and its side-effects
catastrophic... and talking therapy ends up being
a monologue with a table filled by notes with single
words on them and being asked: to identify their meaning...
anyone who has experienced these practices
can also say: i'm actually conscious you're making me
feel like a ******* ******... you've just insulted my
intelligence... and i'm back to square one at kindergarten...
   have you ever watched you-tube frustrations?
well... a thought-***** has nothing to do with
    that map of the brain...
                                feeling goes here,
  seeing goes here...             a mash-up and a mess akin
   to the map of the European union...
          because some rich boy scumbag drew it
in crayon at the beginning of the 20th century means
it has to be right...
                                  but if i treat thinking as a thought-*****,
i know how the ***** works...
            a heart is a muscular pump...
  the stomach is a digestive acid swamp...
                        the esophagus is stretch-armstrong...
should i feel guilty writing about this?
          should i? touchy subject? well... you won't
find any pills around here... well, apart from the sleeping
pills... they're sacred (to me, at least, as if the bourbon,
but that's my private affair... you walk down this
route: it heals me... not necessarily you) -
  this is to simply end the whole pseudo-Cartesian dichotomy
of philosophy popularised by psychology and
psychiatry - for these two areas are bound to simply
popularise philosophy... and given that most people
don't read a book in that area... it's easier to manipulate
people in therapy with the knowledge passed down
from on high.
                                       and it's there...
the dichotomy parallelism is primarily due to the fact that
most people think of the brain with two categories:
a. when physical pain strikes it (a headache)
and b. when physical pain is absent (with what ease
    they think)...
  the problem lies in the perception of b.,
most people can conceptualise that there's something
deeper than the raw physicality of things...
i do remember times when i encountered that
ease of thinking...
                                        i experienced it...
it was there... ****, i lost it... but that provided me with
an un-inhibitory trance of a writing capacity...
   the question is... how can merely thinking be painful?
most mental health problems never ask this:
thinking is painful...
                                      isn't that what most melancholics
state, but with a more emotional language of
feelings and emotions?                  
             if the thought-***** is damaged...
then all thinking coming from this compartment of the brain
will be painful...
                               so what sort of paracetamol
do you take? it's not as easy as being prescribed
high-blood pressure pills...
                                      popping pills like that
you're only escaping a conscious moment of what
an automated ***** feels

each bird has its own branch and i am alone now
in mid-february midnight desolation
under a web of stars white as salt and just as plentiful
waiting on the celestial cyclist to bring the dawn across
my face and scorch the cool wet grass

tonight the clouds are arranged like a chessboard
a cosmic design in darkness and light
and i am a crippled pawn meditating with
with my pants off and my naked feet
in the sand of a north florida crossroads
trying to lose my own gravity and merge
with the stars cloaked in maniac faith
and american sweat

i'm waiting to be found by a bush doctor
with my head filled and floating like a nitrous balloon
under a canopy of hi-frequency bats
and the infinite disco ball hoping
this mighty poem might expand
time and fill space

i am no longer a jail cell poet starving
and pacing like a goldfish in an orange jumpsuit
the miraculous sunbreak has touched my deepest cells
hypnotized my life and caught
the tears on the right side of my face
i am a bee trembling in sunlight
salute me

i hope there is a mild breeze today
to dance sensually with my drifter's spirit
and swirl blond hair and pure cotton against
the sky at the top of this abandoned railroad bridge
covered in rust

all the sudden i am singing radically
about overcoming cosmic humiliation
bruise-purple tongue unhitched and lilting
long throat curled up toward the sun
as the birds and deer stand dumbfounded in the clearing
the sound resonates in my gut as my big white
teeth slam together

in this devout moment among
my share of god's abundance
i am only approximately human
one with the smell of living trees
dancing on the salad hillside
big eyes birthed inside sunset colors
soaked in warm honey with toes
twitching above the imagined
fire at my feet

when the singing stops and
the sun goes down i melt
back into my own temporal lobe
caressed by a butterfly finally
able to sleep

Shadow of life
Always has your back.
Loves your reflection of character in the sun.
It accepts your flaws and splendors.
It wishes it can remember your actions.
It can't cause it has no brain.
Only you can remember what you've done.
It's underneath your control
It feels lonely without some light in your life.
It knows a new day will be around.
It's seen in every direction like a Queen.
It's on a chessboard wondering where you want to go.
It wishes it can touch you.
It wishes it can make you king.
It wishes it can help you with your ambitions
It can't cause it knows it takes time.
It understands confidence.
I loves to walk with you.
It loves to run with you.
It follows you when your in love.
It wishes it can wipe your tears
It can't, but it acknowledges your pain.
It loves to be hugged.
It loves when you hug your soulmate.
It questions if he, or she is the right one.
It loves when you drink coffee.
It wants to feel energized and alive.
It watches when you drink alcohol.
It dislikes you when you pass out.
It loves when you stay hydrated.
It knows, i't wont help it's shadowy skin.
It wishes it can take care of you when you're sick.
It can't but it knows you are the doctor at heart.
It knows when you become young and old.
It knows, it will vanish when you're dead.
It wishes to see you in heaven someday.
It wishes it can hug you when your in solitude.
It can't comfort you, but knows you need someone.
It Comprehends your exertion.
It wishes it can move again, cause it's your friend.
It wishes it can talk, and meet your new friends and shadows.
It can't but it's comfortable with who you have in your life.
It wishes you can give it a name.
It knows you can keep the same same, or change it.
It misses you when you are sleeping.
It wishes it can get rid of the monster under the bed.
It can't get rid of the monster, but it knows you grow.
It wishes it can fight for you.
It can't fight your battles, but it will cheer for you.
It wishes it can take care of you.
When you can't take care of yourself.
It doesn't want you to be afraid.
Cause then you are afraid of yourself.
It loves you for who you are, so don't run.

Enter: Insecure like your neighbor's router.
The girl next door vs. an identity crisis
Caught in the torment of her name
Konfusion
The Konstantine of your dreams
In a nightmare of reality
The relationship
She fell out of
To follow a polluted path
             To become
                    A misled materialized martyr

After
He says to her,
Something misogynistic
about her role
Or what he thinks he can control
To put her in her place
She's just a pawn on his chessboard
Never a Queen he should be fighting for
Using her body as a human shield
to avenge his own shadows

Exploited.
This is their daily
He's the blade 
And she's the self-harm
Tracing the anti-battlescars
Writing love on her arms

Just when the knife couldn't cut any deeper
Somewhere between 
Too far
And fillet o' soul
She had enough 
but didn't break
Just felt her ego pull

Broken/Free
She packed her eternal baggage
And hit the runway
Running on the emptiness inside.
Fueled by frustrations
To keep the fire burning 
Before she doused herself in the elixir

A hungry ghost 
purging patience 
In spite of everything
Soon to be made up 
And lined up for the onslaught 
Led to slaughter what dignity she has left

She says, "Oh, but I'll show him now. I'm not his precious little prize"

...

...Please don't...try to move another
human being as dead weight upon
a polarized black/white chessboard.
Our here...and...NOW...is too charged...
(again...TOO CHARGED)...and will
demand an equanimous outcome.
Trade the object of perception for
the Subject of perception wherever you
may be...perception itself must dissolve
into its chessboard...O Consciousness...
O God!!!

my mother is like the queen
she is the queen of everything
but in the sense that all that matters is reputation and
i am merely a means to an end.

i am the pawn on the chessboard
and she likes to play with her pawns carved out hollow,
brittle shells on the edge of breaking.
she likes the power of holding a fragile heart in her hands
to nurture and then destroy as she sees fit
for her own entertainment.

is it still my fault i turned out the way i am?

storytelling was god’s first gift
to humanity,
a way to embalm our histories,
to dress them up
just as a mortician might paint
the dead
to give the illusion of life—
the mirage of
immortality on our own terms.

and so we become this patchwork of stories,
tales sewn into
the very fabric of human existence like
some great cosmic
game of telephone stretching across
13,000 generations
of **** sapiens who lived and loved
under the same
canopy of distant, blazing stars.

but like the stars, we too die; we
collapse upon
ourselves, upon the weight of
our genetic code
spooled out and stretched like thread
until there is
nothing left to give—no more DNA
to copy, just an
empty tomb, the stone rolled away.

if only death were a simple thing,
like how our brains
can go on autopilot on our commute to work.
i’d love for us to
be able to hand money to the bus driver
and say, smiling,
“all that is mine i carry with me,”
and board the
bus heading to Somewhere empty-handed.

in this fear of a Somewhere, we’ve
turned god’s
gift into a weapon, sharpened
our walking
sticks into spears, melted our
shields into
double-edged swords, named
one side faith
and the other side belief.  

we cut down those whose beliefs
are different
from ours without exception, as if billions
of years ago
we weren’t all carbon and hydrogen atoms
bonded
together, spinning slowly in the dark expanse of
a frigid universe,
the very foundation of the celestial blueprint.

as if millions of years ago we weren’t
a family
huddled by a fire while the fifth Ice Age
raged on
outside, making glaciers out of  mountains.
we sat together
and swapped stories, painting our lives on
cave walls
using sticks and crushed beetle shells.

in this century, we collect new converts like
captured pawns
on a chessboard, as if belief is a battlefield and
the price of
doubt is a one-way bus pass to a Somewhere
that tastes
like brimstone, milk, and honey licked clean
from a lion’s
ribcage: a hint of ash mixed with sweetness.

because all evil carries a hint of god,
doesn’t it?
he made figs and floods, broom trees
and plagues,
trumpets and leprosy, blessings and
curses. at night we
fear that no amount of weeping or
new covenants
will make the scales fall from our eyes.

so humans, in our finite wisdom
can only
say, “all that is mine i carry with me,”
and pray
to Yeshua, the deliverer, to Adonai, the
Lord, and
rest on the seventh day of our rebirth
so we can
wake at dawn and see that it was good.

some days we can be like Jonah in the
belly of a fish,
wise Solomon on his golden throne lined
with idols, Job
who cursed the day of his birth with every
breath, Naomi
whose bitterness begot the still-born name Mara,
so long as we
remember to carry that which belongs only to us:

love.

I am made of infatuation, shame and forever gloom
You could not fall
This is not the chessboard of your dreams
No pawn makes—
No bishop makes
The queen takes, is taken an equal
This is not an aisle of rebirth
Or some sombre remembrance
It halts, it halts
The numbers lessen
I did not abandon, I am still here
Yet, a halt lingers
Like death stuck on the precipice of throat
A life of a single lifetime of a thought
I am energy, a little restless
But restless so out of the nature of self
Like the eye of a rook
On the king through a rook

A stupor unblinking
Like a sharpening of a dream
The knight-slide like an Arabian sword
The king scuttles
Rook takes rook, king takes rook

I fancied myself a manly dream
But it doesn’t work like that, does it—
The game writes, and children play
Now I wait the shameful minutes away
(And I watch you hands, so patient, simple
Say, are you dead or pleased?)
And I watch your hands
I should’ve looked up when I had the chance
Now the brooding leaves
And my eye hardens
Father, you have won
With a dream so well, you played just right
I should have not worshipped the pawns like that

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.

old themes, the uttering of half-dreams;
to have: lust as the fruit, or love as the bird
been thinking about prayers and how they don’t work
you are my favourite player,
you are my one and only
not really
I would sing you lullabies but you don’t like my voice,
I would bring you flowers but flowers only remind you of funerals.
I keep wanting to reinvent myself
then end up with too many versions
game plan, what’s my game plan
does there have to be a reason for everything?
do I have to explain why I gave my queen up
or why my engine can never start
later, later,
wanted to be some kind of electrifying
no ***** given, that sparks burn out
I’m not in a good place
I hate this place
here they stifle me everyday to save me
like I wasn’t already doomed from the start
got your gun cocked to my head
I’ve got my knife pressed to your throat
deadlock stalemate
wanna bet which one is faster
no regard whatsoever for consequences and responsibility just
living speed and risk and trauma
got me hook line and sinker
got you wrapped around my finger
thank you thank you thank you
of all the pieces on the board you’re my favourite pawn
*not really

light my fuse on fire and set me aflame
watch as you singlehandedly set me ablaze

what is it like to watch me burn, baby?
I'm no better than cinder, ashes in an urn.

lately I feel just like charcoal residue,
remember when I was sweet and wet like honeydew?
do you remember when I was good to you?

how much longer can we pretend?
that we know when this war will end,
I can't express how badly I miss my best friend.

charging towards each other from opposing ends of a battlefield,
no matter how much I beg,
your sword you will not yield.

pull out your guitar and play a chord
I don’t know how much longer I can afford
to run around on this chessboard

moving pawns and rooks
when we should be swimming in ponds,
and reading books.

thoroughly covered in brambles
I‘ll wait as you amble

who knew we could get so tangled in something we thought we could handle?

we’re filled with pride and jealousy,
resentment and envy too

how can we come back from this?

what did we lose?