Mike Ravdonikas: Poems

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/ Every poet in Business class Dreams of First. @verse

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. @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 somewhere on our behalf, as if 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 ward off the imagined smell of kofta (or kebab, depending on the customs of your land) – and pray, when He arises from the blaze to leave the tomb, his gaze be softer than this stab, the hide of this cocoon. @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

Astro-Physicism / If you pray to a black hole, the answers can never escape ⦿ @verse by MR

Crush / 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 as you stop crying until it's bleached out like those ads in long- abandoned stores. @verse by MR