Someone asked me
if I was the same Andreas
Gripp who starred in the movie,
The Dove on the Roof.
I replied it wasn’t
possible. After all,
the flick begat
a sizeable cult
following , albeit in
Germany (really just
East Germany,
the year it was produced,
at the dawn of re-
unification, but I can’t
bog down this poem
with some historical
rigmarole),
while everything
I do has always
finished with a
flop.
Let’s face it: the actor
playing Daniel
is much better-looking
than me;
that I couldn’t
remember lines
to save my life, that Iris
Gusner, the director
ahead of her time,
would have no use
for a Canadian boy—
who’d never
mastered Deutsch
or took directions.
When I looked it up online
on Cinema,
I saw a brief synopsis
having nothing to do with
doves,
just the plurality of
love
and its many
incarnations;
that I have no idea
on how it begins
or who in the end
gets the girl;
knowing I could never
pull it off, pretend that
it was me, say I’d dyed
my blond for the role,
wore prosthetics on my
face
in order to mask
my true identity,
like a pair of bulky
glasses
over Clark Kent’s
X-ray eyes,
keeping him
incognito,
so very long ago,
that it’s ridiculous
you couldn’t tell
that he and heroic
Superman
were one and the very
same, never-ever seeing
them together—in action
or in the drudge of
groceries,
couldn’t solve the sum
of one-times-one,
even if his slicked-
back hair was
rearranged,
with a comb
from the Five-and-Dime,
known to carry all
that you’d imagine,
its dollar-store
descendent
having bins of foreign
films, maybe one
that harkens back to
Nouvelle Vague,
that the odds you’d
discover
it was truly me
were the same
as a red-caped man
from another world—
who could leap in the
air
like a bird,
an emblem of peace
who eventually
saves the day,
waving to those below
who haven’t a clue
who he really is.
Andreas Gripp
November 16, 2024
RF Image
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