Category: Poems

by Martin Anton Smith

My name is Master Grand,

And after at least thirty years,

I’ve started playing Chess again.

I’m playing with an old school friend – Barron.

Barron’s almost definitely autistic,

He walks funny, can’t make eye contact, points strangely at your cat –

& here’s the clincher – could only handle one full year in the ‘real world’ –

before he scampered home to the safety of the parent’s basement.

At least I lasted 13 years!

And I can do a dish.

& So being almost certainly autistic,

Barron’s very very good at Chess.

He won the first six games straight – kicking my ass.

He was loving this,

As he’s ultra-competitive with me – & always has been.

Then – he lost the seventh game.

He took it hard – especially as on the return home – he always has had to tell the news to his mum.

But, to my chagrin – he started winning again.

But then he soon lost again.

I notice each time he lost, his sense of self faltered – for surely he asks himself this:

“Am I not as smart as I think I am?…

And If I’m not smart enough, surely – I’ll be unworthy & unlovable?”

Was I creating a complex in Barron’s mind?

I was like an ‘Iron age man’ dug up from the melting permafrost – my chess skills only now emerging.

Also – I started to do my homework.

I learnt of the Great Grand Masters – of past & present.

USA’s Bobby Fisher Vs USSR’s Spasky 1972,

gary Kasparov losing to the Deep Blue Computer,

The controversy of Champ Magnus Carlson losing to Hans Nieman’s vibrating butt.

Like a sponge, I learnt, I learnt……I watched I watched….I read I read.

& then, I started to win.

The Pawns defended the King with their lives,

My ‘positioning game’ became poetry-not-in-motion,

I timed my castling with aplomb,

I rakishly pinned down his Queen like a rebel.

Yes – I tortoise-wise crawled my way to level pegging with the cocky hare.

Pretty soon I predict I’ll start kicking his skinny-lifestyle-block-paddock-dwelling-ass….

My prediction is when & if this ‘changing of the guard’ become obvious-

He’ll suddenly stop playing chess with me.

So as to forever preserve his superior win/loss ratio.

I doubt Barron’s tiny, possibly autistic ego couldn’t take the blow.

Of course, I could let him win –

In true ‘give a drowning man a life preserver’

But it’s far more interesting to see how this plays out.

This is the Chess game inside the Chess game.

After all – I don’t really know for sure if he’s autistic –

He might just be an asshole.

is it true that All autists can be assholes but not all assholes can be autistic?.

My strategy to continue to win will help me find out his true nature.

Of course, first I have to start kicking his ass,

& this might be hard,

Especially if I have now started an ‘ Chess arms race’.

Maybe I’m being far too over-confidant?

One things for sure:

If you have brains & did great at school –

losing at chess over or any intellectual endeavor & over is really hard to take.

Be you autistic – or just a library variety nerd or even the now multitudinous wannabe nerd.

People with ‘Brains’ or think they do, can be very ego driven, petty, & insecure.

This is why academics hate usually their colleagues & fellow boffins.

Thus in doing this, they display a deep black lack of EQ.

For surely to be a Grandmaster at life – you need IQ and EQ.

IQ alone only gets you to different versions of your mothers basement.

University Professors & their like,

Simply live in a masterfully-obfiscated….

Gargantuan yet splintered….

Great big fucking mother’s basement.

Damn – I wanted to just write about Chess –

I always circle round to Scammy University Professors.

But it is true…

Philosophically speaking I guess it’s becasue of this brute fact:

They as wily old campaigners – proposed a game of financial Chess,

To which I (& perhaps billions of others) didn’t even know I & we said yes too – but I (& we) did…

& how do you win a game of Chess you don’t even know your playing?

This my friend, is impossible.

You can only forever ruminate in your room about it.

Now that you are are bitter, cash strapped, middle aged fool, clacking away at a dusty keyboard.

But at least now you can drink a beer as you look at you ‘upturned chess board’,

with pieces scatered everwhere,

With the King fallen on its side – dead,

With the door slamming periodically in the whispering wind…

& Through the crack in the door –

You see a shadowy figure –

In the hazy distance, long since gone, but their outline still shimmeringly perceptable –

Hightailing it off with your unknown loot.

‘unknown loot’ – for your room was so messy – you couldn’t be sure what he took –

or wether they took anything at all.

Yes – the Knight of Profit rides a stead called chaos & uncertainty.

Chess as always imitates life.

Life is mostly chaotic.

Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise.

And most of us are but pawns.

But it’s the guys playing life as Chess,

That you really need to look out for.

& Socratically speaking,

In terms of Bastardry – I’d rather stay as Master Grand than be a Grand Master.

I dedicate this Poem to the late Bobby Fishcer –

Who in his last few living moments opined:

Chess is a waste of time – it’s mostly just wrote learning & is totally full of mean spirited bastards.

Still, I’m sure he loved that phone call from Spasky in ’72.

This was Master Grand – your old stalemate.