Symphony in A-flat major

I’ve tired of saying

it twice. It dilutes the

gong of love.

My uncle stuffed

his ears with cotton

balls. Not to quiet the Earth

but to bear in mind

the labour of those

enchained. He deemed it

reparation. Organized 3-on-3

at Jane & Finch.

Your ex had mumbled

stay & it blew the game.

Like Dylan

with bazookas in his

mouth. The gum—

not the gun. A superfluous

dubble bubble. Pops

as soon as you gesture for

attention. Like the stone you’ve

skipped along the

stagnant pond. The rest of us

enamoured with the swans.

There’s a peculiar

kind of silence

when the lawyer signs

divorce—listening for a wait 

and like Godot it never comes;

he stutters Beethoven

would’ve traded with

Van Gogh; the ear untimely

sundered noting the swell

of a semibreve—

one he’d been so deaf to

fore the end—like we whenever

sucklings in the shanties

bawl for milk;

the squeals from the

abattoir; feigning we don’t know

French;

and the boy who’s called a

faggot for his skipping in a skirt

& pink barrettes,

bouncing like a Wilson

cast aside. Get wind of the

percussion of

her soles—there upon the

asphalt, cratered like a

face from years of

acne—we’d never call it

music but it is.

Hear it in Ludwig’s 10^th—

the scherzo he failed to finish.

We would have stood in awe,

the plunking of our jaws.

Such is the way of the world.

Such is the way of the world.

Andreas Gripp

May 11, 2026

RF Photograph