My world spins round
too fast most times
from Greek deep roots
on Black Sea ports
to cross Jordan’s River
on Catherine’s Great
trains meet sailboats
greeting sea planes
flying off to ports unknown
throughout my Lake Odessa Highways.

Where Ottomans
blend Spanish matadors,
heroes for my day
and night bleeds forth
a calvary of force
to please titillating whims
of Lake Odessa’s middle class czarinas.

I can’t go home again
to places never born.
My mind can roam
and try to swim
and fly to where and what
and whom and why
we might have been
if we had built
a fine fair fortress
for peace that loves to rock
and sing sad songs
of what sights have been
in Lake Odessa.

Instead of gangs
and clicky clacks
we learn polycultured quacks
to flap and honk like Canadian geese,
to transubstand she ate
where America
begins to end
through Lake Odessa’s streets.

I’m much too busy
and self-important
sleep deprived
and programmed lose to lose
to win our way
back home again
where Lake Odessa meets.

The role of God
as played by me
writing comic operas
only kids can see
was what I loved
most secretly
in long lost Lake Odessa.

We need a better god for now
bringing peach tree jams
immortality
of love as wise
reframes lost loves
to live in jesting jars
of honeyed sweet
corns and thorns
for testing streets
tasting ancient Greeks
on shores of Lake Odessa.

We’re coming back
to save each other
from what might have been
without sly rudders,
tipping posts from wu wei mothers
to rebuild our crystal castle love
of forms that buzz with life
and tours that sag with history
spinning sprays of licks and waves
lapping soft and sandy
on long gone skies
of sanguine Lake Odessa.