eyes of a champion

what do you see in the eyes of a champion?
the starry gaze of a poet
or the steel of a survivor.
The beauty of flair improvised
or the dogma of theory.

where do you go,these eyes of a champion
when moves are footprints in the cosmos
treading patterns across 64 squares.
each square a galaxy.

what do you feel, these eyes of a champion
a son who plays moves like his father,
going beyong the boundaries of his elders
holding each piece with the history
of ancestors in the warm embrace of his mother.

Where do you live, these eyes of a champion
The place where opened are the secrets
the world has lost answers to.

Neu-Isenberg-The Hardest Cull

My pieces froze in Frankfurt
-17 on ice, diagonals skidded
into dead end cul de sacs.

I fought a man of 92
grunted across the board
hunchbacked and delusional
spoke different deep voices.

He lost. Cycled back home
in the Winter.
Sir, let this not be your last.

The man played this game
menaced as if on death row.
thinking sweated dollops of blood,
his big hands clasped,
veins green and blue.

A bear bent to bruise
d4.
and launched a fiery avalanche
of pawns at my centre.
Bishops were lifted into sniper positions
knights flung on 8 sided carriages of metal.

His pieces ran away from him.
Sadly, his king was left alone,
a somnambulist that barked
his passage across the Styx.

AS in chess, I could not show mercy,
answered the age-old monarch-
til it breathed no more.

Big Bear slumped in his chair
stared at the score-sheet.
Eyes ancient, cold, and hurt.

We shook hands,
not even a look in the eye
he packed his things
and left.

My pieces froze in Frankfurt,
were it were Summer
maybe I would not have felt
such pain.

His departure left me
silenced, worn, relieved.

Home

Home

I live in a shoe box
which unhousels me
at wake, and squeezes me at sleep.

In dreams the seams
of the enclave push
further, each time,
to rise droopy eyed
to a reality more distant
than my coffee cup
in its unseated resting
place beside the computer.

My shoe box swells
with Shakespeare, vitamin C,
politics of some Russian, Libyan,
or Banana Replican.
Hair brush meets Pavarotti,
tooth paste leans against Mtukudzi
Air freshener on top of Dunhill
as faded blazers sport old boy ties
of a bigger legacy, I now have no part of.
Thank God for that.

Four diaries, half finished plays,
and dozens of chess books,
make Pandora blush
from this box.

At times, in this bookwormed
eighth of an octagonal whole,
I, like the wriggling leg of a
chess Knight, check the window
sill.

I am still by the window. Standing.

My bed takes up a third of the eighth,
the main feature of the shoe. Here
life lies flat, the sole flatterer
of a flatter/deflated poet who fattens
on the feet of words,
a tick with an ideas fetish
that paws at a four walled
prism from the kennel
of a prison
that corrugates green trees
outside,
interrogates lean ears
on the wayside-
a half baked asylum
where multiple voices
whisper and shout split
hemispheres of crashed
stock exchanges, rigged elections,
and of a coconut with the middle name
Hussein who will lead the US
past the Klan into the Barrack
of Luther's kingdom
without Martin or Thabo,
even though they all secretly
attend the same church
that blame
whites for inventing HIV.


Derranged dangled outside my window
like Damocles did yesterday.
Sometimes the fleyed carcas
of the Observatorian underbelly
comes drifting passed,
a hangman that speaks German
to collect his rent, along with his confidant
the American Pitbull
that bellows in Scrumpies its belligerent advice
to the drinks-sponsored East African
from Long Street
who still has the patience
to listen before bonking
in the back kitchen's staple feed of
drunken visa-exchange;
the requiste (coming-of-age)
exorcism of the African Myth.

Today, I will send a postcard to
the new president, reminding him
of the distant beauty of
a crying beloved country.
The letter will go :
“Dear you,
with love,
Home.”

horizontal messiah

Is there respite. Nails worn
sheets have lost their zeal
cotton fathoms its begnnings
the picker left years ago.

Phone curates images
of a painting that flowed
without ebbing.
A camera gimmick plays
last glance to mimic
your Yogic movement.

My bed has lost its metal
over years of daily
unlocking,
dismissing the gravity
of its oppressive inertia.

Risen from Golgotha's
horizontal messiah.

Dedication to Brail Chess

He felt his way through to mate
fingered her pieces, and squares,
finding the filled, and the vacant,
with dextrous relish.

Hands were eyes, and saw more
than prophets gazing
across the sea.

Kramnik vs Anand, Moskva meets the Ganges

Orders at Red Square
'no ash to the Ganges'
Moskva builds in flood
ready with reflectors
to outstare the outsider.

legend maintains, 'nothing escapes the Ganges'
its ebbing tide will await
your contribution
past eternity, if necessary.

Two rivers meet, and like oceans
in collision, the world watches.

In the Red Corner, the pragmatic praxis of Kremlin,
the Other corner, jogi genius improvised.
The Red is corner of past champions,
the Other is another of cast predictions.

Quakes from Kashmir shudder like prophets
the will of the Ganges,
From Sparrow Hills, the Kremlin seems
unshakeable...unbreakable.

Today Moskva meets the Ganges.
After dusk...
I saw an elephant rise up the Hill
like a big bird perched over its new
conquered horizon.

linares

It all begins here
whatever dream squares
were meant to imagine.

There are those that only speak
in Linares.
Mute everywhere else, except Linares.

Secrets are kept unravelled
unitl the journey leads to Linares.
Blisters are hidden till scars reign in
at Linares.

Words carry weight in Linares.
Threats carry the scent of the hunter
like Hannibal in his Punic war.

Listen carefully,
hear Manolete's 'suerte de matar'
in the bullring,
Bobby grimacing at his pocket set,
Garry finding light in murky waters,
Chucky making miracles,
Vishy storming kings on elephants.

The future is borne in Linares,
young lions ragged in combat.
For their first utterance
to the world, to shout on the
mountain that splits hemispheres.

A Viking has culled a Soothsayer
today. Tomorrow the Ganges
awaits fresh ash.

No stones go unturned in Linares.

In Linares, lies and hyprocisy
last a mere couple of moves.

Queen

Your departure from us
will be a return to you.
Your words of wisdom
become now our pulse.

Classrooms still see you
as do many great halls that
echo what has always meant
to be -a better world.
The one you made for us.

Your son will lead many sons
and we as fathers, will lead ours
through the vestiges of a mother's
blessing. Your blessing.

Our hands like yours will
continue to lay the bricks of
this home that reaches to
heaven, and roots in dignity.

Guide us still Queen,
to the vision that matches
your royalty.

Korchnoi

Ticked off the list of many lists
your lines still stick their searing mark
Across empty buildings, broken windows
a visage of squares, that burn.

You still turn
as did those nights
under the lights of an
eastern horizon,
still learn
as did those fights
under western skies.

The ways of dying in Leningrad
a tutorage of courage
as tanks honed in, and grandma
kept you in her heart
beneath smokey clouds
of a city under siege.

The city has never left you.

Ticked off a list of many lists
Like a pilgrim pacing through
destiny's misgiving secrets,
you found a path away from Pharaoh
to surge through barbed wire,
a hero.

In 64 squares, you discovered
the Elixir of Life,
and have like an Alchemist
found immortality.

I live a thousand lives in your games
more than any dream can conjure.

Thank you.

Kasparov

The sword of Damocles hangs.
Swaying in the wind from a
strand of hair. A reed
on a river bed, just before
the storm.

Know that we are that strand
that touches the handle of steel.
It is us, your friends who
suspend from the sky holding
the sword from its fall.

We struggle with you,
dangle the cliff with you
with every move you make,
every time you sway.

We are the thread that stops
the skies from lightning,
the string that will burn
when stars descend.

we have the power of 64 squares
on which you composed honour,
like music, and gave us a home.
One Of hope and dreams.

Even through the fire of lightning
we will not let you fall,
let Damocles hang,
let threaten his dreary gravity
down from the palace heights,
we shall not let you fall.

Do not stall dear friend
we will not stand to see you crawl.