not drowning, but waving

Not drowning, but waving

Hoping anyone might join

for a swim.

The capital building in old

(Not "Old")

San Juan,

how is it you rose with haste?

Yet Georgian marble remains

your truest form,

Emancipation from the I.V.

A divorce from the respiratory machine.

Any poem that's stumbled

from me,

Like a vagrant into such and such city's streets;

Stay only a reaction to his or hers

Most unique, most praised works.

I'd named an entire record's worth

of songs

after bits and fragments Nabokov left.

But,

I scrapped that one.

Who may I leach from next?

Ingesting dramamine as it were ringworm,

my seasick legs can't stand

this pitch. I tried my damnedest

to hear it once, twice;

it simply can't hold my attention.

That old sinking feeling

creeps up on Andy,

The poet cannot be a painter

who cannot be a dancer

who cannot be a musician

who can never be a playwright

who can try (to no avail) being a filmmaker

who can, as hard as he may,

in any and every medium available,

to capture the sudden outpouring of expression

and creation bleeding from his loins, (a bit of motherly intuition)

but suffice to say, (as many cliches as one can fit)

the visual arts do nothing to relieve him,

the prose he painstakingly peruses and prods leaves eyes burning, mind

still blank.

The swift, unspoken movements are found to be quite unmoving

And no odd collection of phrases and tones (regardless how well orchestrated

rehearsed and arranged) speak to him.

Behind the curtains on stage,

there is only stage (eventually make way for the rear

wall of the theatre)

And thin celluloid never insulted me

(did I say me? Him)

so much in my entire life, "Watch these bared men

And women!" As imitation of what

one has never seen or felt or thought

Passes awkwardly through a projector,

proclaims "This was what coursed through

your own veins and synapses in your brain

That mindset not clearly defined yet as your

old parents car swept you from a childhood home

to a metropolis.

Everyone knows just as little about feeling as you."