The Black and White War

Things were simpler back when we were white
and black, no mingling—“marbling”— and no grey.
Easy to distinguish wrong from right,
you knew your moves. The game we used to play
was simple. Every square, a small affray
was won or lost, a piece was “captured”—dead,
swept from the board. The winner got to stay
until another piece came by and took his head.
But both sides' pieces look the same when bled
and any square can be a battlefield
where pawns fall on the ground they thought they took
just yesterday. We're playing by a book
whose lines are grey, by numbers marked in red.
Behind the lines, the kings refuse to yield.

This is another piece for Cafe Writing. Image courtesy of Carmi Levy at Written Inc.