As daybreak wakes the grimy checkered street,
failure emerges — as a manic Czar
of Russia shambles past the Bishop’s Bar -
with an automaton’s ungainly feet.
The crumbling curbside has become his seat
of power. Routed in a white queen’s war,
he lost his forces fighting from afar
and endgame, great rooks swarmed to his defeat.
Around him castled higher by the state,
pawns have been electronically hewn,
living like kings without their clothes. His knight-
hooded by rank and file, he cannot fight
them down below. Evicted by Deep Blue’s
children he lost a gambit with his fate.