Historian

I wonder what the historians will tell of us
in a thousand years.
Will they speak of numbers and graphs
and physics and chemistry or advancements in neuroscience
which led to revolutions in human progression –
or will they talk of life as it really was.
Life, with all the head-rush and nuanced troubles
and deadlines and traffic cops and parking meters,
the disillusionment of faith for so many when
what they had been told was true contradicted
the prize they were fighting for.
Will they remember a poet or two,
scribbling lines on a paper in cyberspace,
a prophet somewhere in the farthest corners of
the earth’s soul,
on a mountain somewhere,
or maybe in the desert,
still tending his sheep or picking his coffee,
and breathing in the truest breath that man
has ever known.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Racecar

My mother and father stood embraced,
her in her racecar slippers,
him with the weight of the moment
wrapped about his arms,
and they stood and they danced –
my mother and my father –
they left the hospital room around them,
the eyes of their family that had gathered,
they disconnected the monitors
and the morphine and pushed
the prodding needles away into the ethereal distance,
they danced to a song only they could hear,
with a rhythm all their own,
and together they stole breath
back from the world
one last time.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Resolution

When my mama died,
I scoured for some trace of her in cyberspace –
amongst the array of forgotten email accounts,
– scuttling across forgotten passwords
and old letters that littered the bottom
of my imaginary floor,
kicking up dirt and more fog as I passed them.
Finally, when I had at last settled,
I saw her beautiful face so perfectly
that I cried in joy.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry

Stoicism

The sun declines into the insipid darkness
like a memory that once blushed cheeks,
though now does nothing but slide off vacant eyes.
A beetle shuffles across my front porch,
saying goodnight to a snail as they pass,
each unaware of what will become
of the other in the danger
of the night.

And yet there is time for each,
and time yet for time to lay waste
to all the moments before their eyes,
strewn across the nearly endless horizon
of thought,
like the mighty Spanish armada
or a cigarette or cup of tea.

Andrew Venegas
San Jose
SJSU
poetry