Martian Life (a poem)

We’re alright here on Mars.

We’re alright here.

A lungful of air is just slightly less air than before

And birdsong sounds a bit tinny from the speakers of my headphones

And no sound can block out the hum of machinery completely

And I miss chatting with our neighbours over our shared garden fence

And someone decided that red algae made oxygen better than plants

And that white twinkle in our night sky was actually a glorious blue

And I wish we had more time to say goodbye.

But if you stare at the orange dust long enough you can see a green afterimage

And I still see a bit of blue every day when I look into your eyes

And I’ll write their names in the ground outside 

With the clumsy finger of my gloved hand

And the sun takes longer to rise but we get a few more minutes of daylight

And I think they’d be proud of us for moving on

And we’re alive we’re alive we’re alive

And we’ll be alright here on Mars.

Author's Note

Any feedback greatly appreciated, even including whether you liked it or not! I wanted to see if I could write a poem for my sci-fi club's "dreaming of apocalypse" - themed zine, but I'm not too sure about the style I've used and whether I might be laying it on a bit thick. I have other ideas in the bank anyway, just wanted to give sci-fi poetry a shot.

First edit, might this change later if I get more ideas.

Photo by Mike Kiev on Unsplash
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Reviews

[Fabian G. Franklin]

It's a pretty cool premise. I like it. I don't know that I'd actually like living on Mars though. I read a John Varley sci-fi trilogy about outer space and the exploits of Scirocco Jones. They were all about a living planet named Gaea and were written in the late seventies and early eighties. I can highly recommend them. I only mention them here because your poem brought them to mind. They might give you even more inspiration to work from. I know he was nominated for a Nebula Award for the first of the books. The books are titled (in order) Titan, Wizard and Demon. The small planet sized being is supposedly in orbit around the planet Saturn in our galaxy.

[rmarrwrites]

Thank you! Always looking for good book recommendations. From the synopsis, the world building sounds amazing for that trilogy. I'd love to build a much larger space colonisation universe for a short story if inspiration ever strikes me.

As you can (hopefully) tell from this poem, I think life on a Mars colony would be really miserable compared to Earth, especially with the grief for what settlers would choose to leave behind, or have no choice to leave behind in this particular imagining.