Peace and Pieces on a Chessboard

By

Noel A. Ihebuzor

On an uneven chessboard, across

boundaries of squares, fading

lines almost erased by coarse rough moves

pawns lurch around in drunken

lounging leaps

 

 

To the beckon and rhythm of the imperious,

rooks regal in a flurry of frenzied

moves, cavort in wobbly diagonal swoops

the dance of hubris revs and raves,

in the dawning madness

sense swims poorly and eventually drowns

 

 

We sit and watch the king’s ungainly ambles

the queen’s sauntering about

all over and everywhere

in kinky dizzying circles and cycles

in spins like a dancer

possessed and guided by the moon

 

 

Voice hoarse with passion, she

chants the moon is mine

that star is yours

but the sun is mine, mine to have and hold

as I please

 

 

And in this maddening clamour

of screams and scrambles like from fevered dreams

all that emerges,

ugly like a noisy fart at prayers

is a fight for portions of a cake

we did not bake

but “reason” now belongs to treason

to the loud and the lewd

 

 

Pawns and persons move,

associations form and un-form,

permanence is fluid

fluidity, permanent

 

 

During this dance of pawns and rooks,

of crooks, new saints,

canonized in their halls of infamy

play new strains of strange chimes of fiefdom

suggestive of floating notes

from tunes of thiefdom

 

 

In these moves and countermoves

the loudest is always right

the cloak of might and night

threatens the light of truth

 

 

Soon the haze of a dawning evening

catches pawns, bishops, king, queen and knights

unawares, night soon blankets them,

while the stars above blink and wink

at the now dispersing crowd,

seduced and befuddled onlookers

still clutching the half full bowls of porridge

for which they sold their soles and souls

and pawned their very voices