I’m so invisible
here
I’m starting to think
I’m one of those dead
people who don’t know
they’re dead
at least that’s
what I typed, on AssFace,
the folly of Zuckerberg,
and the only
reason I’m jotting this
is to never be
never was.
Instead, see me beneath
the banyan, inhaling
its verdancy,
like a monk
beside his incense,
envisioning
Bodhisattvas,
telling the birds
that’s enough,
I’ve scribbled of you
ad nauseum—
have nothing at all
to show,
not even a fourth-
place ribbon,
from the women’s
church bazaar,
and it was there,
in the basement,
where the Vicar
did his deeds,
the syphilis that
we thought he got
dormant now for ages.
Say again?
Unpunished
is no good act?
I talk to you
of baseball, the Pirates'
Roberto Clemente,
his plane that plunged
on the eve of
’73, the Nicaraguan
aid that perished
with him,
that if he didn’t give
a shit he might have thrived
till ’24,
yes, the year we’re
currently in, where I tread
past the tents of the homeless
swelled en route to the hockey
game, the one on the
screen at the pub,
plunk a pair
of 20s down
so I can gin-it
but in style,
and after the cup
is won, go up
to the park
to find me, as blue
gives way to black,
naming distant
suns that are pinned
upon it, as though it’s
never been done before,
as if they’re children
who could have lived, if it wasn’t
for famine and plague,
for Franz Fucking Ferdinand,
for the dominoes
which keep on falling
in his stead:
see them there in Gaza
burned alive,
in the bones
of the Holodomor,
in the tattooed arms
of Jews
who should have blossomed
otherwise,
Anne Frank
a novelist,
while Germans
come to call, ask her
for autographs,
and me, tallying up
the galaxies
while waiting to finally
die, feigning
I’ve a son who’s counting
with me, darkness
in his eyes
where all the starlight
would have been.
Andreas Gripp
May 21, 2024
RF Image
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