Zugzwang

The title of this joint venture is derived from a position in chess where one player can move only with loss or severe disadvantage. Not so for the reader, who wanders into a wordplay of pathos, humour and life. Robert Guzder opens with a host of instruments, attempting the music of love. Indeed, his body language is at times both whimsical and serious, but always oblique. And if that’s not enough, then how about a stick-up at the bookie’s? Eddie Gibbons has a wit keen as a hook: bright, barbed and deadly. A sense of the sardonic prevails. He sets up scenes with most surprising endings, be it the last poet on Earth or Simon Armitage. But don’t be deceived, at times there falls a serious gravity.

A Song Called You

I’ve written a song called You
it could have been a waltz
but the timing’s flawed
the drum a restless heartbeat
the cymbals ominous
 
I wanted a joyous harmony
but the guitar creaks
like stairs at 4 a.m.
the piano a rattle of jewels
in a locking drawer

I wanted a crescendo middle eight
an orgasm of notes from a saxophone
but it plays from a different sheet
and now
intruding
a triangle

I wanted it to end in sixty years
a chorus of harps 
but it stops with a key change
a violin
the sound of a door
shutting on tired hinges


Robert Guzder


Epilogue

The last poet on the planet
felt the weight of the word
upon him. Burdened with nouns,
shackled to adjectives, he could not
utter a sentence that was not laden
with meaning.

His wife and children had left him
because he could not say the words
bread, butter, knife,
without alluding to texture,
weather, the angle of light.

He governed his tongue like a tyrant.
Whenever it shaped a word such as
spade, hoe, plum, he would spit
it out and summon a deeper description.

Children chided him, who spoke
such strange vocab: his convo-
luted diction, his strange Slavonic
vowels: he who spoke no logo-language.

And so the world shunned him, shied
away from his descriptions: became a place
of things; of that-which-is-pointed-at.
Wearied, he packed all his metaphors for
moon : sun : stars: sky : time
into a suitcase and called it a day.


Eddie Gibbons

Bio: Robert Guzder has had work broadcast on Oneword Radio and has performed his poetry at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He lives in the Midlands with his partner, some children, and a dog, where he spends a lot of time trying not to be zugwanged in chess competitions.

Bio: Eddie Gibbons has three publications to date: Stations of the Heart, The Republic of Ted, and Three-way Street. He lives in Aberdeen, where he has successfully avoided playing any chess at all.