Mike Ravdonikas: Poems

My life as a rat / Yes, every city is a cage of streets, seen from above, but also – of your habits: Paths you take (or don't), cafes you frequent, squares you pass on your way home, to work, to dance on Friday night, and restaurants you might have dined at, had they not been closed. Oh, yes. A dozen roads and fifteen hundred extras would be enough to film your whole damn life on set – and yet you need a million people to feel thoroughly alone? Ten thousand destinations to pretend you're cornered? Five hundred thousand square kilometers to stay away from land in towers, way above the 40th floor – Ah, yes. A Universe, to know: it's there, outside the door. MR@verse

A Cummings nocturne / The night guards disappear into the darkness noise of their devices scraps of football voice a family with far- away child or a gently dog sounds village life an ocean miles ago Palms bitterly bright outside the office building – 2AM white streetlight A beached taxi driver next to tire phone lighting face: pale cigarettes of this today MR@verse

Tearing off another page / Here’s to another month Of languid, peaceful winter, Only rarely windy, Only slightly cool. @verse

Came up with this format for mike_ravdonikas on Instagram.

More of you / It may be well that we don't have a daughter – else my heart could burst from seeing you, condensed in a new being, not entirely repeated – but carried forward with a tint of me (some waviness of hair? of somewhat lighter black?) I don't think I could know how to react without dissolving, how to hold this in my arms without imploding from the power of another such existence. MR @verse

Tearing off the calendar page / What’s a month to a year? Less than a toe, Less than a finger, More than a tooth. @verse

Happy New Year from Kobayashi Issa. Although his new year would’ve started about a month later. @verse

Merry indeed / What bliss it would have been to know we’ve already been saved, and all that’s left is celebrating the occasion: to “deck our halls with boughs” and fill our malls with endless variations on the same ten songs; to know the things that mattered happened in the past: the vast expanse of universe ahead – a pool ball, rolling to a halt. The eight is pocketed, the shots all taken, nothing left to call. @verse

Voices of War / What wicked times: the voice of Paddington concedes his country’s loss of infrastructure, lives, instead of making fun of some imaginary robber loose in London’s streets. A sharp turn in the fairy tale – and winter’s coming: nudity, offensive language, violence (extreme), abuse of substances (think: gas, oil, blood) – it could be rated “W” for War, but where’s the agency to keep those aged between a minute and a lifetime from the screening? @verse

———————————- Reading 100 Poems / Lapping meltwater From the frozen pond Of poems full of secrets @verse

Poetic justice / An artichoke: The most poetic thing that you can choke on. If they keep you up at night / In cities, every siren means someone got a chance to stay unharmed. (P.S. In case you were wondering, nobody was choked in the making of these two completely unrelated bits of verse.) @verse

(In Naples, this page could pass for a cityscape.)