081221b

Perseverance crosses alluvial fan lake bed holds its breath

080621b

the wind whispers in a fog of fine sand Ingenuity braves headwinds

032321

 

Red Rover

The crater was old,

No eyes saw it

When the river cut through

Its eroded rim,

Building a delta of silt and mud

Under the moons and stars.

Time passed,

The river shrank to a trickle, then nothing.

Wind-blown sand dunes

Worked and reworked

The lake’s desiccated bed.

100,000 millennia later,

Perseverance pays off,

Tracks mark troughs between the dunes,

A probe penetrates here and there.

Enzymes slick the probe,

Corrode the AI’s housing;

No life on Planet Four,

But a fair imitation

Kills the rover dead.

Wind covers tracks; nothing but sand

Moves on desert Mars.

 

030621c

 

the latest hotrod

drops in from numero 3

you don't give up, do you?

 

030621b

 

the robot truck

jounces to a stop

on the lake bottom

Martian 0

 

022421c

 

Perseverance strikes water

dormant metalophiles find the feast

of a billion years

110920c

 

body language

which face do I look at

on this Martian cop

110820c

 

thawing

a martian lake

I look for life

091320

 

Red Planet Bar--Closing Time

dare –

too

many

kids have sex

outside Mars 1 Dome

the pain of burning airless screams

crystal eyes adorn rigid corpses on dawn’s cold dunes

 

090220b

 

screaming face

on the Martian's shirt

hint or warning?

040220b

bright
summer sun
parched brown grass
first
drops in
a billion years
Earth
steps in
Mars wakes up
look
up at
the brown planet

032220e

When Psis Do Crime


any flat surface
I'll make it hot enough to
fry that Martian's head
after he tell us where it's
hid, or after he refuse

031520e

Mars Colony 1 Under Attack

Nobody knew

What happened to the mice,

Evolved to survive, people say,

Like that explains it.

Grandpa was working in red dome

When it happened,

Bloody scrap of suit,

all Grandma got back;

She was never the same since.

Don't know who thought of putting out the moss,

The tardigrades come for the moss;

You don't see them,

Wouldn't want to,

with their sucking, tooth-ringed mouths,

And so many bulbous, jiggly legs.

They deal with te mice though,

Never bother anything else,

Unless...you forget the moss.

031520

Mars doesn't have trees
leave the wood carving tools
and Lemon Pledge

021720d

Closed Loop

The digger fouled up,

That’s the only explanation.

Programmed to expand the colony,

Sent ahead to dig more tunnels,

It took a wrong turn somewhere,

Maybe a bug, or a virus

Scrambling the programming,

Whatever the cause,

We woke to find ourselves living in a Klein bottle,

Every tunnel simply leads to another,

None will take us out.

The outside world:

Mars City, Mars itself, yada yada,

Might as well have been destroyed,

Maybe it was,

And maybe this was deliberate,

Maybe somebody in here

Really pissed off somebody important,

Out there.

Meanwhile, Betsy wants to see her mom,

Working topside when it happened,

Grandma and grandpa,

sunsets.

I miss them too,

And I’m knocking on the walls.

Is anybody listening?

112319c

These huge bones,

arching from dune to dune,

mappable from space,

this pitiless waste's only shade.

Paleontologists disinter flippers

meters long, billennia old,

their bones curiously like those of Earth,

when last was there a Martian sea?

111419

Rip van Winkle on Mars



I'd dreamed a Martian tundra:
tussocks, tiny flowers--
I guess I overslept
Dome open to the thin cold sky,
rooms agape, no thing left behind,
a burn mark where the lander crouched
is their goodbye
out back a midden: wrappers, boxes;
hunkering, I see a bit of gray-green mold
inside a plastic wrap,
company is good, but for companionship
I'll need to wait a few billion years.
I could use a nap.



If you like this poem, check out my recent collection, Metastable Systems. This and many other recent SF, fantasy, & horror poems are found therein.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/760901

102019b

Phobos loves Deimos
they're so close
but forever far

100319

in Martian winter
earmuffs are not enough
can't wait for global warming

092619b

On Mars we found
new kinds of rocks
never seen on Earth

Just kidding
Mars looks exactly like
our planet will in a thousand years
unless we get our act together
and stop wrecking the place