The King Gambit
In every corner that same noise blared
Those wounding echoes through the ever so familiar corridor
Incomplete without the pawns, bishops
The knights, rooks
The Queen lost and no one to blame
But the unrelenting assault.
The intent dangled dangerously between the lines
Nothing to differentiate as the opaque illusion wrapped,
Swiftly from the quicksand to the coffin,
But that tiny droplet of water,
Refusing to leave the faucet’s dry mouth,
Regenerating that Jekyll and Hyde.
The six reflections buried under heaves of ash,
Truth of sadness, lies of joy
Kick out from those six homes
To wake up in the heaven of hell.
Having effortlessly shattered the strongest of fortresses
Truly is a marvel, how well the head works ever so often.
The king remained patient yet vigilant
The crude moves did mitigation none
Under the crushing pressure and oppressive darkness,
Of the few that masked support.
Lost his focus, sanity, venom, pierce,
Still smiling on that broken road.
They only noticed the hollow space
When it was the need of the hour.
When they were outnumbered,
Or were at mercy of a checkmate.
Yet the moonlight always shone on them each night,
Hiding the guillotine that he never wanted.
He couldn’t live in that distant silence
Never a debt to vengeance
Those spears denied by not a heart
A royal fork nothing less than reality
Ironclad that vest was,
Made of antimatter circling those wounds.
That wicked lash and those brutal tears,
The comeuppance for that which never existed,
That fake dopamine, the non existent serotonin,
Collectively hunting the exposed anxious,
Just suffering, with no sharp killing intent,
Only to get hunted by the prey.
How he yearned for heaven’s ray
The checkmate that never came
That empty void purer than the human heart,
Those broken shards wiser than the human brain,
That battered bone stronger than one untouched
And yet an unending end it seemed.
Oh how he yearned for hell’s fire,
To rot in its echelons from head to toe.
To never show how corrupted it really was
Invincibility for infinite pain.
As the rusted ankh waited patiently
For the elusive king gambit.
The final spread of the pestilence of indifference,
The scourge shattered and fickle,
Sheltering from the mace of his destiny
From those which memories fondly recalled,
Immaculate was the coordination to save a skin he never wanted,
The satisfaction of drowning him in drugged thoughts a fiction.
And every shivering walk taken,
On the bridge that remained foggy,
Swift approval of each step,
Despite playing two rooks and a queen,
The king is all he needed
For a final crack at a stalemate.
By: Haseeb Husain Mukadam
Write and Win: Participate in Creative writing Contest & International Essay Contest and win fabulous prizes.
