Mike Ravdonikas: Poems

Homage / I didn’t buy Bukoswki’s book for fifteen hundred bucks, signed, first edition. He would have laughed his ass off: tiny earthquake in Green Hills, LA. @verse by MR

Out of the corner of my eye: an open fan. Who brought the cake? Who took the slices?

My granddad’s birthday, but he won’t get older. Starting last year, every summer, it’s just me.

Cycling alone Past Andrew Wyeth fields – No lid on the world! #haiku by MR

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable. (Seneca) I’d fill my sail at once with prayers and sweet winds, were I to know which way my prow should face, to hasten me toward the shores on which it grew and first extended gentle branches to the moon – before the shipwright’s hand had hewn it into this, the homeless figurehead; the shores I do so miss. @verse by MR

MBA Any poet in Business class Dreams of First. @verse (Disclosure: I don’t; first is lonely AF, at least on Emirates.)

Misfiring platitudes / How many people reading “you’re the product if it’s free” went “O-M-G! Why, I’m a product from a major corporation! Move aside!” @verse by MR

Woe, awesomeness / A ballerina trains for decades to keep her head up and her straight defiant back and — smile! — when burning at the stake for the affront her mastery inflicts on wretched hearts like mine. @verse by MR

Now post this / Try to remember for a day: a war is on. Try to remember every day it's there: it's there. Try to hold on to that while war thrives anywhere. You will have lived a life of wars: untouched, un- spared. You will have sac- rificed so much, they — left unscared? @verse by MR

Catjutants / For my mother Remember this: Wherever you might be, No matter what your task, No matter what your deadline – At least one cat Has been assigned to you and me To dream on our behalf Upon a blanket, like it’s bedtime. @verse by MR

Holy cooked / contemplating a too modern crucifix The charred remains of Jesus, blending with his cross, fit for a world past nuclear demise: I search his face for seared-shut eyes to drive back the imagined smell of kofta (or kebab, depending on the customs of your land) – and pray his gaze be softer than this stab, the hide of this cocoon – when He arises from the blaze to leave the tomb. @verse by MR

An exercise in worthlessness / A pound of teabags, lightly used. In general: last year's projections; futures on goat milk; certificates of authenticity for snoring patterns, chess moves, nasal hair styles; Or, back to specifics: sack of apple cores; a Caribbean quarter (maybe not: its flip side's got a ship...); 'Cease and Desist' from made-up lawyers. Pitted almonds, sautéed ice-cream, sanded dates. The breath of langoustines still moving on the counter. Kidneys (you can get one Bitcoin for the price of five!). List poems over thirty lines. Mimes in the dark. Mark Zuckerberg (except, for his shareholders). Ground microchips. Some strange dude's hateful comments. What you think you could have said that time instead of what you said. Gourmet dog chow. Your whole damn life — unless you go to bed. (Right. Now.) @verse by MR (This, evidently, is a poem from those late hours of night that border a bit too closely on "early" — but I'm sparing you the notification by scheduling it for morning. 💤)

Astro-Physicism / If you pray to a black hole, your prayers may never escape ⦿ @verse by MR

Crash / A little bird knocked on my window with the full force of its gentle body. But I wasn't home. @verse by MR

This too / And every war will end, if only when no people have remained for dying. Every refuge will become a home – if just because you’ve finished drying bedsheets, freshly washed, the seven-hundredth time. And every pang of pain will stay a memory, but fade when you stop crying — up until it's bleached out like those ads in long- abandoned stores. And then evaporate — the soul has little room for sores. @verse by MR

Machine Teaching / The helpless AI-God flips through a billion answers to a hapless prayer. Would this bit of recipe, this fragment of a thesis, mixed with a sutra, shaken, stirred, provide relief? A sense of unity? A patch of calm in troubled waters? Reasons to be good? He tries his best to put together a Commandment with the zeal of a blind stained-glass maker, his six-fingered moral compass spinning on... @verse by MR

@verse by MR

Ocean Local (sound on 🔈) It was never about an actual train. I wrote this on a beach, watching the surf line (so yes, no typos here), and thinking of the subway at best – not the mighty Shinkansen. Yet, here it is now: a bridge between a bullet-train at Kyoto station and an Antiguan sunset, both shot last year. @verse by MR

A journey from pain to health in 8 poems, with thanks to everyone involved — and a warning to anyone working behind a screen. https://telegra.ph/There-and-Neck-Again-in-8-Poems-03-04 @verse by MR

The thing about clouds /   I used to write a lot about my clouds – one language and two continents ago. Their snowy march across my spring was proud, like arching backs on certain beds, and so seemed future paths which, back then, flowed ahead. My cloud processions led the way a while and yet, no cloud’s reliable – they fled to leave behind a new life: new apartment, empty skies, save for a haze of sand on the horizon, and the rising heat of January’s end. A “cloud”? In this Dubai, it’s but the tenth time that I squeeze the word into a poem – Boeings paint my skies with semblances of these, not saturnine enough to prove the mantra still holds true: whatever you might think, whatever you might do, the clouds above you   MOVE. @verse by MR