Futility

The bards of yore

lamented

all the times they

murmured love

to demurring piths.

 

Today they’d say it

different—taking all the romance

from their strophes—

 

shredding every

ticket while the

numbered orbs will

ping-pong at their twins,

like the initial

break of pool; bumper

cars in neutrons

of an atom—Chadwick

‘fore their time

but not their sense.

 

Horses that were flogged

are now the drones in

Beit Hanoun—

the splatter of its

rocks like slivered glass.

How much smaller must

they be? The wine’s

already bled. The hush of

no more weddings.

 

Never mind the bride—

you’ve yet to even make it

up to maid. A spinster isn’t

such for how she threads—

it’s the bottle in the basement

on its axis, the boys who

pray it doesn’t stop at you.

Your gin at

90 proof

will spin the ceiling.

 

There’s a certain

kind of silence

after trauma. A thumping

of the webbing

by the sill while it is windy—

flies all on their backs—

wings are the first to go.

 

See it in the f

that’s given up—drooped like

Charlie Brown, his valentine

reverted in the mail, its seal of

wax untouched like

it’s the cooties.

The custom goes back

ages. Britannica’s

Broken Hearts

would brim the world,

 

fettered by a bower

every side, a burden that’s

so heavy that it’s light,

a faith that’s made of

sky in place of pie—sliced in

30 pieces—no one even

showed;

 

and you beneath the leafless

mountain alder, willing

it to sprout; exhaling

into navels of

balloons already popped.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

May 25, 2026

RF Photograph

Why the Sheraton Soap is Safe with You

It began when you were

young. Told to wash your

hands at dinner time—

you dunked them in the

mud outside the door,

a wild-eyed John the Baptist,

declared that they had never

been as clean as they were now.

 

Purity isn’t white—

neither is it snow.

The melt will take it down

the grubby river—yes,

even the grubs will splish

& splash on a Saturday

night. What else would they

be up to?

 

What we call filth

is spotless. Immaculate.

It’s why Mary never kept her

hands in gloves. Beneath her

nails the glory of the soil.

 

You learned in Art that

black is all the colours—

immersed in germy earth;

at one with the defiled.

 

It’s why you claimed

the centipede

is the holiest of us all,

Jesus on His knees

to bathe their feet,

so caught up with meek

 

that He forgot about the Cross—

or put it off at least until

the table He was to dine on

 

was rife with so much filth

that even the Lamb of God

Himself could see His own

unmarred reflection in its dazzle.

Andreas Gripp

May 24, 2026

the moment you tell me poets aren’t in it for the bucks

I’ve yet to see a

poet

on our currency.

That’s not to say

that Fox and Viola

Desmond aren’t worthy—for

they are. And a preference

to the same old

privileged faces

on our cash.

 

Purdy’s a pretty

good choice to bump our

monarch off the twenty—

simply for his Service. It’s certainly

the Smart thing to do. Or maybe

stick his A-frame on the

fifty buckaroo—inhabited by a solemn

John McCrae—up to his

chin in poppies—not for seeds but

to remember.

 

An Acorn under the tree

with Brandi Bird, in a state of

pleasant Bliss along the

Glenn that’s brimmed with Stones—once

an Olive LoveGrove painted

Jade—now awaiting

the Amber Dawn—

perhaps to scribe a Sonnet,

not of where  but

Howe and Wenn, laughing all

the way to the Banks once

back in vogue.

 

But my money’s

on Sitoski, on-Brand like

Paul Vermeersch. Peacock

on a thousand-dollar Bill—

a stride of wing & colour from

the Lane then onto Rhodes.

 

Let’s have Belcourt on

the toonie;

which is not to say he’s less

as like the loonie it will

last a million years—

Lockhart on the single

dollar heads, flipped in Essex air

to Pick & choose.

 

As for me, I’ll wait for the copper

Penny to make a comeback.

It’s too bad they did a Cull

as with a Gunn—a flame

consumed the Wicks—

nothing left but Ash

in frozen Winters.

Kemp would have been a natural

but I’d etch her on a Nichol—silver—

just like days of old, when you

fished it from your pocket

 

as with a Rod, for a Deahl

we never thought  

would go away—a pack of

Cherry Twist, a Maracle of coin

that's come & gone.

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

May 23, 2026

photo by Andreas

38 Canadian Poets are alluded to 

or directly referenced in this poem. 

Can you name them all?

Lambency, or Parker Park, 6:45am

There’s a reason

we like it dark

while having sex.

A lamp’s no friend

of flaws. Fuck off with

fluorescence.

 

There’s a reason

we call them blinds. Why

you’ll don your Ray-Bans

reading braille. A girl once

felt your acne, you said it

spoke of words.

Appalachians in the snow

awaiting melt.

A trowel to a ‘60s

popcorn ceiling.

 

Touch comes up with

ways to hear & see.

Resourceful in the clutch.

Our senses tell of

need and never want.

Water is innate

but not desire.

 

If you think that

it’s a riddle think

again. Or maybe do it

right right from the

get-go. A go-go getter

 

leaping out of bed—

a geyser from the ground

as soon as the lark

has voiced the dark

has up & fled.

There’s a reason for a

rhyme. And when it

bites its tongue for

the greater good.

 

Less is more gleans

only what’s essential.

Hunger in lieu of coitus.

The latter in lieu of thirst.

 

Or the why for which

your face had gone beet-

red—like borscht that

spent three hours in the sun,

when the dinner gong

had summoned,

no one could bother

to show.

 

Or the man with sight

being led

by a dog who’s blind,

the way both will roll in

the grass before it’s cut—

within the earshot of

an engine, chowing its breakfast

down; the waft of gasoline—

all for the guise of green—

 

beholding the dawning glint

for what it is:

a fabled tale of Sol,

Luna’s morning gossip,

disclosing what we’re

missing when we blink.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

May 21, 2026

The Phobia, or Channeling Orville Redenbacher—with cheese

Willard, there are rats in the basement

—1971

 

Ben, most people would turn you away

I don’t listen to a word they say

They don’t know you as I do

—Michael Jackson

 

There is no fear in love

—1 John 4:18

 

Mice are always

cuter out-of-doors.

The way they squeak

& squirm has always

given me the willies.

 

Why I’m watching Willard

I do not know. But Ben &

friends have shown me that

these rats would be much worse.

They’ll chew you to the marrow—

your wires in the wall as

though it’s licorice.

Ditto for the Wiley Wallaby

in your engine—

your Mustang ’72.

 

They’re piranhas

who’ve learned to crawl, claws

in place of fins. Unlike squirrels

 

they’ve absconded our endearment;

eschewed a fuzz-on-tails

which may have saved.

 

Teach me about the

line of love & hate.

Narrow like a whisker.

The space

between each tooth.

 

Love is a bath of water for

the birds. Leaving it in the

night since it’s the bats

who lap it up. Their wings

like fallen angels, the flip-

side of the finch. A rat in

hellish flight.

 

But maybe it’s the sky

who knows them best.

It’s why we lift

our visage to the stars.

Why we think of heaven

in the plumes. You surely

didn’t think it

out of fright?

 

Not theirs—mine when I hear a

scratching in the gypsum,

never considering a drywall’s

simple itch, or the ghosts are

now so lonely they’ll

speak in the only

wretched language they have left.

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

May 20, 2026

the reason I forked two grand to fix my shocks

The man who works for

the city is clearly a poet.

Watch him as he skirts the

jagged potholes on the road.

For him they are

a mimicry of moon. Craters to

fill with trope and not with tar.

 

Eye him as his hose

sucks all the chaff up

from the sewer—an elephant

at the edge of a

watering hole—cognizant of

predation

yet awise it needs to drink.

 

How can a behemoth

be affrighted by a mouse?

Look again—the Norway

rat placed gently on the lawn.

If it’s unworthy of love,

then how can we tell our

children of the light?

Its big bang burst of

fervour? This is why creation’s

mostly space, he’ll smugly proffer.

Where else could it catch its

wheezing breath? He’ll add

we die much sooner

from our thirst than lack of food.

From the gasp of

suffocation

before our throats

declare a drought.

To asphyxiate is to

drown in gales of air.

The laying down of asphalt

is the mote in a child’s eye.

 

You’ll ask him what that means

and he’ll merely shrug.

A magician never divulges

what they’ve learned. Neither a

would-be minstrel. If there are

no secrets left,

how will we ponder the

pits he’s left behind?

It’s how I bathe the birds

once it has rained.

Why I write of cloudburst

when it’s dry.

 

What will you tell

the mechanic once you’re there?

What you might scream is

broke she’ll say is fixed.

What we call sick is healed.

We seldom see the earth

beneath the tarmac. Note the 

writhe of life

below our gold & ivory lines.

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

May 18, 2026