We verify, at an early stage, that the argument to textMatch is a literal. You should see this error when you execute the query: Waldo plan nodes do not support variables as arguments. Waldo is the search subsystem which implements textMatch.
You can use FILTER with CONTAINS or REGEX. We are planning to support a variable argument to textMatch when it is bound in another triple pattern. You can look for this in a future version of Stardog.