Immortality

I lament I’ll

be forgotten

once I’m gone.

Failing to be

the poet

I had hoped.

There are worse

things in the world

than not remembered.

Hitler will always be

cited. Just like

Genghis Khan.

I prefer my name

to never be spoken again,

than as the inventor

of atomic bombs,

a Gacy-esque

killer clown,

or for my recipe for

fish-in-a-flan.

So what

if no one reads

my witless poems,

a hundred years from now?

I’d rather be

some forlorn Alexander

than one who says he’s Great,

his ego beyond

control, seizing

all the lands

outside his vista.

It’s better I decay

in anonymity, no one to

further my flaws:

sneer my hair

was disarrayed like

Phyllis Diller,

spout I drank

until the dawn,

ink upon my fingers

like the blood of every

baby in Judaea,

ever-striving

to pen a verse

a million kids

will chant by rote,

unaware that

there’s a missile

with a name etched

on its way.

Andreas Gripp

April 18, 2025

Statue of a Poet by Michele Gherardi