2013 -- 5.2 (Spring) Poetry

The Red Planet

by: C.E. Churchill

2,106 miles of burning sun

776 days of hell.

It seems appropriate, at first,

That they named the planet

After the god of war,

But truth is,

All of us know that to

Step onto its blistering surface

would not be a battle

But a massacre,

Engineered by our own greedy hands.

95.32% CO2 atmosphere,

0.376 gs of gravity.

The Red Planet mocks us,

A herald for broken dreams,

Lost hopes.

It calls out to us, full of malice, its words as cruel and

Blackened

As it has made out hearts.

“Come and you die,” its says,

“I am not a rest stop for

You. I am not salvation.”

370 miles of volcanoes,

But with days only 40 minutes longer than our own,

Mars hovers beyond the blue sky,

Too far to see, too far to reach,

Too far to claim.

Second smallest planet in the solar system,

Fourth planet from the sun.

The Red Planet,

It mocks us.

It will never be our home.