Why the Royal Tyrrell Museum Kicked Me Out

If it weren’t for the iridium

in the strata,

the rulers of the roost

would still be dinosaurs—

the peak of the pecking order.

Waking us on the farm

instead of the drawl of

Foghorn Leghorn. 

 

I’ve heard deGrasse & Dawkins

say the chickens are dinosaurs.

That Colonel Sanders knew it

from the start. But none would

buy a share in KFD.

Everything tastes like

poultry in the end. 

It’s just the batter

we all want.

 

We were never their

heir apparent; and

it’s apparent we’ll be

dethroned—usurpers

who have gobbled

their remains.

 

What did you think you

fed your Maserati?

Texas tea? Oro negro?

The fumes are but their

laughter laughing last.

Even in their bones

they cackle best.

Those magnificent, 

regal bones.

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

March 31, 2026

The Ascension

I’d be a poet if

it weren’t for other poets.

Twelve of them

orbiting the trunk

of a walnut tree, bemoaning

there’s no fruit;

craning up their neck

like some egret,

then scribbling in “regret”—

as if none have ever thought

of that before.

 

6 of them will note

they see it lean—

ready to deem it Pisa.

The other half-

dozen focusing on the

bark, incising in

initials—from some latent,

schoolyard love—

or cleverly inserting

something

about a dachshund, how its bite is

worse than its—

 

none of which will matter

as the work crews have arrived

to axe it down. It will be

another poem of loss.

 

All will lament the rings.

Compare them to some

circle/metaphor. How it doesn’t

have a place of start & stop,

riffing every

Mahayana monk

they’ve ever heard.

 

They will cheap-

out with their dauby

Paper Mates

(cheep—get it?),

wait for the mama bird

to lift the same old tired

psalm she always does.

 

I’d rather sleep through dawn

than write of wings; cringing

when they post their magnum

opus.

 

I’ll pass them

at the pub some afternoon,

watch them toast themselves—

each one yet another

Dylan Thomas,

Kerouac 2.0,

 

or Edna St. Vincent Millay—

yes, how can you go wrong

with a name like that? Thinking all

the greats

were senseless, loutish drunks—

it comes with the

territory—and that the world

will someday fawn

 

upon their genius misconstrued;

knowing the moribund

spawns immortals,

citing an unknown

Emily Dickinson, who even today

still seizes laurels

launched from the hands

of your featherless wood.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

March 30, 2026

Stridulation, or The Cricket Factory Closed in London Town

 

“The biggest barrier is the yuck factor”

—CBC News, March 29, 2026

 

I wouldn’t eat them

either. I’m not John

the fucking Baptist. No honey/

maple syrup

could ever make a difference.

Gravy can only do

so much. How you hide

says more than what is hidden.

 

But this has nothing to do

with brunch, or

the messenger of the Lord.

Or the mustard by

which you’ll cloak your

ballpark frank. You’re out at

first

before you’ve swung the bat.

 

The unsighted cannot see

what they are chewing.

Their tongues do

twice the work. I imagine that the

aphids taste much better—

when you’re told they’re Frito-Lay.

When Doritos fail to drop

from the vending

machine, they become filet mignon.

 

Starvation makes you mad.

Look into the vacant

eyes of Belzec. Tell me they

wouldn’t have swallowed

caterpillar stew. My flippancy’s

gone too far.

 

There’s a reason

for best before. Lest we’ve

butterflies in our

gut. This has nada

to do with nerves.

 

Who will croon of

evening when the

cicadas have been stilled?

What stands in for Luna—

as the smoke

ascends like cloth

to veil her scars?

As kids we thought it

cheese. Swiss is the

biggest rip-off

of them all. You pay

as much for holes

as for the milk. Craters an

empty bowl

on which to ponder.

 

We say that something’s

pretty if it’s never

marred by life. A collision

is just the fervency

of love; its impatience;

a kiss that’s leapt too quick.

 

Even the fireflies

flee, their taillights

in the distance like

an ordered evacuation.

And once that they have left,

night will be bereft

of all the beauty

we failed to hear—

 

the aria of a star;

 

a shepherd’s sentinel,

hooting all is clear—

 

the serenade of frogs

we thought off-key; or the

multi-legged creeping

down their throats,

a second chance to

trill with fallen wings.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

March 29, 2026

Mesopotamia, or Shoeless in the Desert

 

The most senseless

faux pas

life ever made

was heaving itself to land.

Its sands that bore our

serpents.

 

Fish are never thirsty.

Fins have never felt

a crucifixion. Or hangnails

lasting weeks. The wrench

of aging backs—while

pulling up their socks.

Each one with its  

holes like effervescence. 

 

We were all better off in the

sea. No partition of the waters.

Clods with a nuclear

code. Everything was sushi.

 

The octopus? A spider

who changed her mind.

Floating in the deep

as if the heavens; starfish

for its suns. No more sulking

in a corner with its silk.

Twiddling its many thumbs.

Forgetting it could sew itself

some threads; pause its naked

days; like some suddenly

bashful primates—tramping to a

tailor’s for a fitting; somewhere

beyond the fruit where rivers kiss.

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

March 28, 2026 

Advice from an Older Poet

Never write a poem

when you are hungry.

Much like a grocery

run—the bill is

thrice the price

when you are famished.

Your potatoes

a bag of boulders

on your back.

 

Never paint a landscape

while you’re starving.

The willows will be

leafless—not because

it’s winter but each green

the look of sage,

 

and you envision it as

season for your trout—

which will multiply

profusely in your river—

that pretzels through the

canvas peacock blue.

Every fowl’s fare

with an empty gut.

 

You will morph

the stones to bread. Like Jesus

had He yielded to temptation.

And not just any loaf will do.

Naan that’s soaked in saffron,

from the yawn of our morning

orb. Butter has never been better.

 

Your snow will salt the meadow,

which has suddenly

teemed with steers.

Acorns change to grapes so

you can wash it down the

gullet with Baco Noir.

Choosers need not be beggars.

 

Never let a rumble

be your muse.

You’ll come up with

half-baked verse, expect three

Michelin stars. Work a horse

into its stanzas

you’re so ravenous

you could eat.

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

March 27, 2026

The Babushka

I bet you Kratos couldn’t

open this pickle

jar. As if it had been

fastened by cement.

I lament the fact if I

can’t get to the gherkins,

what’s a little old lady

supposed to do?

 

The bag in the box of Apple Smacks

refuses to be pried. The glue from

a thousand steeds. Considering what

it’s doing to my obliques, it’s a

GoodLife all its own.

What’s a little old lady

supposed to do?

 

The can opener’s called in

sick. Every single canine’s

chipped or broke. It’s as useful

as Gums McGoo.

I pity all the Dorothys in the world.

 

They’ve vacuum sealed the salmon—

like Christ with a Roman guard.

The scissors & the

knives have chickened out—

no one wants a hernia

so who can blame them?

I’ll send a morse

to Musée d’Orsay, plead

for a guillotine.

What’s a little old lady

supposed to do?

 

You say I must care madly

for “little old ladies.” Envision

their slow starvation although

abutted by a billion jars—

like a shelter

beneath Megiddo, legumes

for the end of the world.

 

Mavis lives upstairs, and judging

by the rumpus seeping

through the popcorn

ceiling, I think I might have

undershot her might:

 

shearing off a bottle

with her dentures;

thawing a puck-hard steak

with just the fever

of her breath;

 

and the Polskie Ogórki?

There’s no fortress

Bick’s can build

by which to thwart her

voracious hands—biceps like

Ferrigno; abs on which she

does her Tuesday wash;

 

and nails the shape of

talons—that she’ll use

on Yaroslav Grüt—

amid a quarrel on the

way she’s shucking maize,

its mess on his rocking

chair;

 

or during a night of

deviant love, divulging

through her grunts

what she desires.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

March 26, 2026

The Magus

 

They say the hand is

quicker

than the eye. Everything

is, really. Two turtles

playing catch-up

with a squirrel—seeing its

bounding appendage in

ellipse. If rats had fluffy

tails, we’d all be stuffing

walls with provolone.

 

I caught your beauty in a

mirror—my sight

was somewhat slower

than my tongue.

I said I would have

loved you

had my pupils honed in

sooner—some phantom

afternoon in Jacob

Park.

 

Years are much too long to

house regret. It’s why the tortoise

drags its feet. The insufferable

weight of shells—every thought a

ballast. My mother

trudged the school

like Quasimodo. Blame the

burden, not the spine.

 

Ears will leave our eyes

consuming dust. Your father

watched The Preakness

for the sound. A gallop’s

blur of triumph

by a nose.

 

I’ve heard a scent

births reminiscence. Swifter

than the spotting of an elm.

One that bears

initials, the scars from a

hurried touch. Behold its

mourning trunk—as the Spring

betrays its sorrow

in the guise of quenching

thirst.

 

Our shadows only

move beneath the light.

It’s said that nothing’s

quicker—at three hundred

million meters every second—

half the stars it shows us, passed

away. And what is death—

if not nimble on its feet?

Averse to feel our fury

should we spy our sluggish

faces in its glass.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

March 24, 2026