Thursday 12 July 2007

poems in progress - Losing Badly at Chess

Losing Badly at Chess

for K., who touched me



though I never touched her
and that’s why I’m here
to tell you my townspeople,

about advances being dealt in
less it fall through lost six o'clock frames and blurred pixels.

The very idea of it sends shivers down my associates.
It’s unnatural, with my vows and all.

Others like broken goods, distractions
this far into the game enough to forget it altogether


just be, so anyone bothering to follow
eventually gives in to the winning level


hits soulless notes
as if
not even liking whoever was listening
to teasers, not even stories
memories jogged from hints
to pass on reconstructions that never were
because always there in the back of the mind
idiomatic gatherings around the well
while horsemen enter the palace followed by these
projections.

Some say her ex beat her, some say she beat her ex.
After the 007 reruns I’m good
at dodging bullets,
keeping an ongoing distance as the game unfolds
jumping off at the nearest peak.

Higher ups live to be wheedled,
dashing for overtures tossed off a disaster set
pushed open when everyone tried to be by the hanging microphone
to be discovered by agents in the flashing hallway.

She tests their immunity with long tosses of hair dyed premature purple
forcing the lens to accommodate motions in any direction.
It was part of a game played even after we’d all gone
to the bathroom, checked scooters behind red lines,
played her hand like the fortune-telling machine on Sunmoon Lake,
solitary, self-contained, sending scrolls for whims to come and go

unrelated to anything but the tantrums and good restraint of gods
claiming her, while we chatted up and down the long table
experiencing the dillydallying of Hegel’s service dialectic
whereupon she blurted in vain, I have taken Him as my savior
and we all busted up — to hear it from her here
like hearing The Lord’s Prayer from the mouth of Batman —
gadget junkie under the wing of the Wayne Foundation,
direct line to the Gothem PD – set.

Even if the Penguin had him hog-tied and sending him into the fire
what would he do with such a prayer?
He would never need to say I am here
for a drawing of straws, all moving forward as planned.


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