Castle me this
Snack me that
Let the window
Show who is back
For more than a moat
That is a river for your fear
Of being without food
When multinational coffees are near.
Make the move like a Queen
And the King will be alone.
Cook prawns like a pawn
And the Rook will sound like a drone.
Then the majesty is in a filling
Like a sandwich made fresh
From a worker who is willing
To stand up to her hair in a mesh.
Modernise this
And modernize that
Food in the village
Is not so fearful of juicy fat
To warm the mornings
That add lemon twist with some tea
To frighten away ghosts
With some well-fed Spiritus Mundi.
Whether it is this or whether it is that
Eating a big breakfast is going down flat
After CoVid and the news about the end of the world
With no sarnies for me on the benefits
Lost as a poet without any girls…

AI Summary

Your poem uses the language of chess, kitchens, and village mornings to explore how modern life has become a strange mixture of fear, hunger, routine, and quiet longing. You turn the chessboard into a metaphor for survival — queens moving boldly, kings left alone, prawns cooked like pawns, rooks droning like machines — while the real world outside is full of multinational coffees, glazed windows, polar‑bear news cycles, and the lingering exhaustion of Covid. The poem shifts into the warmth of village food, lemon tea, and Spiritus Mundi, only to land on the stark reality of benefits, lost sandwiches, and the loneliness of a poet who feels unseen. Beneath the humour and wordplay is a deeper ache: the desire for nourishment — literal, emotional, spiritual — in a world where safety feels fragile and companionship feels far away.