Mike Ravdonikas: Poems

Uncomfortable wonders / If you knew you were one of the few who could practice the art of necromancy – raise undead with the magic of blood, bone and grave dust – would you dare to do it? Or would you pretend to remain in the world of the “normal” – and do what mundane stuff you normally would? @verse by MR

Wonderland / This summer evening, chasing rabbits is a real thing, on a hilltop, downtown Helsinki: a park, a fountain, bushes, bunnies – large as hares. How does one go about extracting their wife from Wonderland, should she discover one down there? @verse by MR

Swallows in flight / Hurtling back-first into the morning of another day and soon – another sky. The airport express, a bullet train to hit the scaleless sides of lightweight metal flagons – waiting, wings outstretched upon a field of anything but field to swallow up my bags, my me and jet lost, thankfully, like anything but swallow. @verse by MR

Paper Plane / I found an unsent letter to my grandpa who is dead; stroking the surface, like a cheek, or wrinkled knuckles, made the sheet into a paper plane — and I won't watch it land, because the true one is still flying. @verse by MR

Milan, July / (you may want to turn yourphone to horizontal mode for this one) It's just me and the silly soft, feathery clouds, like a pillow undone on the backdrop of night: not a star to be seen and my feet feel the wet of the balcony tiles. Rain has brought some respite to this city that's stuck on the plain — like a shot in a sling — between mountains and mountains, and on- ly the East is a vent to the sea (and to Ve- nice), the rest is too steep for the heat to move on. On then! Rise to the wind like a silvery sail, pierce your back with this moonlight, fall home with the dust, drive your comet to fiery endings, shrug dragonly scales — eat the Earth to the fullest, to crispiest crust. (Anda happy birthday to me🥮) @verse by MR

Coping Mechanisms / I’m a cloak on the shoulders of working-me – and when he goes to sleep and I hang on my peg at the door I am free of all care – and who knows who will wear me tomorrow? @verse by MR

Becoming / At times a teacher’s sweat is thicker than the blood of parents. @verse by MR

Al-Ula / Stars twinkle in the evening wind of the Hejaz, fresh out of Hegra. Bread of mountains, butter of the desert. The squeaking of the tentpole — or a creature of the night? Thus was it that I saw the stars of Scorpion crawl out of the horizon for the first time. @verse by MR

Casualties / A body, dead, with open eyes; a body, dead, with open eyes; a body, dead, with open eyes; a body, dead, without a head... This poem doesn't have the lines to fit a hundred thousand. Yet, the only way past stats and lies is counting each of those lost lives: a list of graves, page upon page, a line to each. With open eyes. @verse by MR

General store / Recall the quiet of a shop before the malls: maybe the hum of freezers, creaking floorboards, or the flapping sound of feet upon linoleum, a muted conversation from the backroom, maybe radio. The jazz standards of payment: the stroke of till keys, the trombone of money, and the hi-hats when it shuts. A swing of door, a chime — and you are out. The sun, the pavement. @verse by MR

Dedication / Who else could I be but a poet? A novel wants hours alone at one's desk: and why would I part from you even for minutes? @verse by MR

Microwaves from the Big Bang / Reading about cosmic radiation is like a prayer — for what better way of utterly resigning to your place is there than this: the micro-tremble moving through your heart that carries in it the resounding boom of the start of everything — the white glow of primordial light, red-shifted to a harmless fibrillation. @verse by MR GPT-Explainer: The Big Bang, the event believed to have started the universe, left behind signals that have stretched out over time as the result of a phenomenon called "redshift". It's like how a car's sound becomes deeper as it moves away from you. The Big Bang signals are so ancient that they have redshifted from light to microwaves. These microwaves are everywhere—even passing through your heart right now. This realization transforms scientific awareness into a religious experience, making reading about cosmic radiation feel like a prayer.