Eventide

The dark gets a bad rap.

Everyone fawns for the light.

Poets & the Pious are the worst—

rejoice when night is over.

 

Angels fall to its abyss.

Demons crawl from out.

We’ve been schooled to flinch

from its embrace.

We forgot its tender

comfort in the womb.

 

We pity the blind, assume

they’re unable to see.

They are the first to tell you

there’s nothing to fear.

Horror has usurped them

with its guile. Black is cast

as villain. Glory’s always white.

Darkness tells it different.

 

It begets our silhouettes.

Plunges us to passion.

Note your widened

pupils, like a mouth

that’s primed to kiss.

Nighttime is our Cupid

not our keeper.

 

It is mystery and it is knowledge.

It reveals our cosmic birth.

It sings us clemently to sleep,

shrouds us while we slumber

in the fields.

 

I’m unable to guess

how it got this way.

Our forebears

had looked up to midnight’s

grandeur—never down.

It’s how we behold the heavens.

Learn we’re not alone.

The truth of a trillion stars.

 

Now our eyes are ever-

lowered to our screens.

What is it we’re hoping to

find? When wonder’s been

eternally aloft, stood up like

a bride amid a breeze,

longing for her belovѐd

 

to at last unearth her grace,

there within the shadows in

the moment a candle’s snuffed.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

July 26, 2026

photo: FamVeld / Getty Images 

Be Happy, Don’t Worry

It seems one & all will

scribble of the rain—

but not in the rain.

 

I get your ink will

smear. Paper will be

sodden like an overzealous

Scotch-Brite.

Unless your poem’s called

Waterlogged,

that simply will not do.

And unless your tale

has L’Oréal—

the cliché of a runny

flume—you’re better

off beneath our

gleaming star. People

are always beaming

when it’s sunny.

I’ve yet to see a

frown within its rays.

I’ve yet to see a smile

in a cat & dog

deluge. I doubt Noah’s

barge of pets had

blissfully whistled to

Bobby McFerrin.

 

Of course, I understand

your laptop getting

soaked. The shock you’ll get

when your elegy’s up &

done, for the dove felled

by a flash, your hair like

Phyllis Diller’s—

once you’ve plugged it

in the wall before it’s dry,

fathoming why those

inside the death house

eschew electric chairs,

opt for a splash of

bullets, venom in their

veins, or kicking their feet to

swing, like a mid-air

Fred Astaire, the clouds

a pregnant matron, bawling

her water’s broke.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

July 21, 2026

photo: Kevin Carden / Dreamstime

Road Rage, or It Happened One Night

I am a marvelous housekeeper.

Every time I leave a man

I keep his house.

                         —Zsa Zsa Gabor

 

Character is what

you are inside your

car. Forget that in-the-

dark rubbish.

 

It’s when you’re driving

solo that you’ll cuss to

kingdom come. Raise a

phallic finger to the putz

who’s jumping lanes as if

it’s tennis; Zsa Zsa

flipping husbands

like she’s Century 21;

 

then the Sunday morning clods

inside their putt putt, plodding to

St. Satan’s

like a slug upon a sloth.

Their honk if you love Jesus

makes you reach for a

phantom musket.

 

The cops who flout

the rules are even

worse. Kings of the

Rolling Stop. Rubbing their

exemptions in your face.

They’ll read your lips with

ease—as though they’re

HAL 9000—

know obscenities like a

wiener knows its beans.

 

The clown who rides

your ass is just as grating.

His bumper mounts

your trunk as if

a hippo in his heat.

Bruh, there’s kids

around.

 

Then the lie

from GPS,

stating your ETA is

merely an hour away—

as though there are

no potholes, the nonchalant

of reds, each one

timed to your fury, how much

you’re in a hurry—

and the pedestrians

who dawdle as they

cross, fixated on their

phones, googling

Wimpy’s Diner,

or maybe Shangri-la,

 

musing on how much

further they’ll have to mosey,

thumbs up to the wind,

catch a lift

like Claudette Colbert,

skirt pulled to her

thigh, Gable left

blindsided by a

siren’s ability to

pause; leave you idle

by the ditch

as if you’ve no place

better to be that

very moment.

 

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

July 20, 2026

movie still from It Happened One Night (1934)

The Neophyte

With my every endeavour

you comment

baby steps. It’s irksome

beyond conviction.

 

I attempt to master

French,

you blurt out baby steps.

Rest assured, pas de bébé

will be words I learn

from rote.

 

Elsewhere it’s Italian,

birthing spaghettini

from the scratch of

semolina. I serve it

past the semblance

of al dente, and though you

up my age—povero bambino—

the condescension lingers

like Romano. There’s enough

on my plate already

en Français.

 

I spit the flesh of

melon but not the seeds—

you chuckle baby steps.

Stick a soother

in my pout and

watch me seethe.

I’ll build a beanstalk

to the nimbi

if given time.

Jacques will have no

victoire over me.

 

I’ll do 50 reps of

push-ups for my climb.

Every squat a toddler’s

clumsy stride.

I’ll be so ripped

my face will be on

Gerber’s. I’ll eat nothing

but carrot mush.

And then when

I’m big & burly,

I’ll be beseeched

to land on Mars,

be Armstrong 2.0—

 

and you’ll still

be by my side, huddled

in the module,

the white of our clasping

knuckles tints of moon,

egging me on to take that

maiden leap, like a marionette

who’s snipped its tethered

strings, discard my training

wheels, race into a sunrise with

my wondrous, googly eyes.

 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

July 19, 2026

photo: Trudy Wilkerson / Dreamstime

What Settles

The sun has gone on

strike. Luna will not cross

the picket line. The stars

have birthed a wildcat

constellation. Blue &

white no longer

waltz aloft.

 

The kites are full of

soot. Verdancy

is pewter never

scoured. Even the fish are

foul. Everything is fume.

 

The runner on third

is home. Dug into

her basement with

the fetid. The clematis

has been climbing

in reverse, slumming

with the moles &

our decay.

 

Someday in the stratum,

they’ll wonder what we

were. The reasons why we

smoked the land

which fed us. The blur of

dawn & dusk. Choking

every warbler that could

simply soar no higher.

 

Why stand with stretching

fingers to this vault

of amber-ash? Who do you think

is there, eager to pull you

up into Valhalla, teach

you how to breathe

without the air?

 

 

  

 

Andreas Gripp

July 17, 2026

photo: shutterstock

Capitalism

It’s essentially cleaner to be

corrupt and rich than it is

to be innocent and poor.

 

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

 

Poverty is an

entirely human thing.

Aardvarks have

no ghettos. Foxes

wear no rags.

A den is a den is a den.

Being a realtor

would be murder.

 

The cheetah doesn’t

need a Lamborghini.

The porcupines

have balked at private

jets. Their needles

are enough. One might even

play a Brahms concerto.

My stylus has a fracture

and I’ve nothing but

the sparrows for my tunes.

 

Tell me of a whale

who’s unemployed. Food

stamps for the snails.

None of them lack a

home in which to dwell.

And somehow we’re

supreme.

 

Ostriches? Content

with what they have.

The ground above

their gaze. We assume that

they’re ashamed, or

feigning all is well.

They simply see the

worth of what we won’t.

 

And then the scorpion—

who knows the shoreline

doesn’t need a

gauche cabana. Show me one

with fingers to the bone, their

knees disfigured spuds,

from scrubbing a

filthy stairwell of its grime,

 

her brood of famished

kids in some favella,

no Adidas

for plumping feet,

onesies that will fit them

head-to-tail,

 

which sting you like

the dickens down

in Rio, you in a hammock’s

sway, a straw in your batida, 

though there's no one  

who’s been wailing

beneath your soles. 

 

 

Andreas Gripp

July 15, 2026

photo: David Levenson / Getty Images