Patriotism

When he asked me why I had not spoken
with the others when ‘it’ happened,
I told him that I did not wish to wear
my allegiance as a shirt;
I did not wish to make mine dirty.
And he called me a coward,
but I am here, clean
in all that really matters.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

when I learned my Mama was dying

Wrap your mind around a word,
and hold the texture of it firm.
Then think about its implication –
take 'mama' for instance –
and if you have a soul,
watch as it is humbled,
and slowly taught by silence.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Living like ants

Sometimes I swelter from my own mortality;
it sears me through that monstrous lens
atop my head;
though I scurry to hide in darkness –
under a blanket, or car, or crack
somewhere in the Earth –
still it finds me,
and still it burns.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Vettriano

Along with Vettriano,
I’m always on the beach…
an amateur philosopher with
a long brimmed hat in hand –
always finally coming home,
to an upturned leg and lips,
a warm embrace to melt the trace,
of ‘maybes’ now remised .

Along with Vettriano,
I dance in ocean tides
and swim along the rim of heaven
while moonbeams pass me by.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Boxing

We are a dancing musical troupe
that sings in collared shirts and jeans –
“collate, ship, return, repeat!”
Our four act show parades
between two breaks and an hour intermission
for the actors to recompose their character
through the contents of a paper bag
or cup of cool drink.

No need for makeup – dirt;
no need for boom mics; we hardly speak.
Jim Rome serenades the ears,
a symphony of artistic prefabrication
to keep pace,
like the drums of some mighty Minoan warship.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Surreptitiousness

The greatest ninja ever born…
is two years old.
The largest treasure ever forged…
goes well with a glass of milk –
when Sleeping Mother dreams of holidays,
away and unsuspecting of the dread –
the ninja strikes!

How innocent the culprit looks,
though diligent with shifty eyes –
What knowledge he, the ninja knows,
is smuggled with a smile.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Tea

The flutter of fragrant blueberries in a tiny bag
coaxes my thoughts away from ‘more urgent matters’,
soothing the bands of tense muscle wound tightly
around my chest and neck.
“Ah,” I say, letting out my troubles.
And the world settles for a while.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Heaven

'This is Always' plays to a baby grand in my dreams,
Christmas lights above our heads –
black ties tucked in jackets dancing around
the red and white silk-thread summer gowns
in the thicket of a weightless night.
Almost lost in distant coruscation,
in sidestep pivots and dimpled smirks,
champagne on your lips,
while heaven sighs in mirth.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

TV

If I stare into the pixels,
am I looking in a human?
Is the image what I see or what it is –
that which we all know…
a hundred thousand waves of light
that dance in frenzied flight,
lying to eyes and fooling minds
with awe and grace and might.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Deluge

There was a flood last year,
and most likely,
there will be one this year,
just as climbers weather frost and snow to Everest’s zenith
while still warm bodies pack the ice beneath them.
Like the Soviets who stood in Stalingrad,
cattle on the line,
a pin piercing their brains one by one,
oblivious to the obviousness from any other perspective,
or perhaps shocked by the inevitability of it all.
Yet, there is beauty in the deluge of man,
to overcome by attrition,
and compensate through time –
to push the borders of sanity and reason
for ideal ends by any means.
Egypt flourished by the Nile,
and then only by the floods…

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Computer

(Think a moment,
do you really want to do that? Yeah.)
Escape! Escape! Escape!
What?! Control, Alt, Del!
No! Stupid computer! It’s all your fault!
I’ll system error you, damnit!

[-SYSTEM ERROR-
-REBOOT DRIVE-
-SYSTEM FAILURE-
-SUCKA-]

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Riding cars on the sun

Even in the summer,
when the bursts of transparent waves distort
the lines before you,
when they blast your face in searing walls,
how calming it is to hug the distance with a smile
and throw the world off –
how soon the stinging is forgotten by your eyes,
as the road blurs space with time and you.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Pharmacy

Tell Eos dextroamphetamine will do the trick,
and Morpheus that Lunesta has claimed his title.
Tell Melpomene Prozac has seen her inspiration with smiles,
but do not speak to Eros.
I know it would not be the same.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

The day the Sun came up

I remember the day the Sun came up,
it’s majestic crown blazing in the sky.
It stood upon the mast of dirt and rising crust in beauty,
and there was not an eye untouched,
unloved or unmoved by that simple, perfect statement
of being, as it guided our souls beyond the new horizon.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Fireworks

I have never seen a firework show that I didn’t enjoy.
Something guttural applauds
the carnage of the explosions;
it makes you roar with awe in the fury of brilliant
destruction,
and it moves the finer nature of the human soul
to closer examination,
till it is quieted in the ending hush of
sound and fleeting summer light.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

The Best Phone Call

Some are anxious,
excited and wound tightly,
still others enlightening,
with a profound silence at the end.
And then there are the ones you don’t expect –
those are the best ones,
when you come crawling out of a cold sweat
or hellacious day or both,
and there she is,
like a piano solo to define you –
a glass of ice tea in the summer swell of heat,
where you find it.
When all the world is ready to race off your tongue,
your ears break first,
and moments stream in blissful perfection
from exactly what you didn’t know
you needed.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Battle Royale

It is pizza Friday,
and the arena bosses have tossed the precious
disks into the ring like guns.
We all know our sides in this dog-eat-dog
sort of world;
no one else is leaving here alive.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Points

In the isolation of the Arctic tundra, white wolves
scamper across blankets of white powder,
unaware of extremes and absolutes,
howling to the only moon they know
and the only stars they’ve ever seen.
There is no “somewhere”, no “someday”,
not even heaven,
only their echoes across a barren snowscape.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Beer

Cool ignorance flushing down a knowing throat
to bless a fool with gracious numbness,
and fill a hole in churning space
with warming suds for rosy cheeks and frosty nights.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Oz

Undoubtedly,
while Dorothy wandered puzzled through
the forest on that winding yellow road
to see the mighty Wizard,
another traveler left the Emerald City
in search of something more,
and found it far away,
though not beyond a rainbow.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Warehouse

Everyday I move boxes from
somewhere to somewhere,
never knowing what I move –

The smell of dust glazed upon the package,
the folded, pressed treasure chest,
with all its wonder and its secrets –
maybe I ship diamonds to far off islands,
or guns for noble revolutions;
maybe they hold food for poor young children
in countries I will never see,

or maybe they are just old boxes,
and these are just my daydreams,
and I am still a boy…

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Cigarettes

The bittersweet perfection of knowing your death
is wrapped in the stick you hold to your lips
and kiss.
It almost makes you feel alive.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Tinfoil

Wrap the meat of it all together,
and lock in the juices that swell with flavor.
Simmer the sinew till it is full and rich and thick,
till it leaps to be enjoyed and savored.
Then you will know that you are ready,
and all the better it will taste,
when you appreciate what it was and has become.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Sardines

The way we pack ourselves
so tight together that we can
lick the salt off the dead flesh
pressed against our faces,
our eyes bulging and
jammed up the
back end of the poor fellow
just adjacent – how delicious.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry