Mother Mars (a poem)

The Earth, Mom One, looms, though
not for long, not today, not on
this day of funding freezes, of gag orders, of
a thousand new motivations for
rich, white Silicon Valley-types to play
Occupy Mars, to play: “Adios, Earth” (insert narcissistic
pause, jock-nerd nod, then unflinching turn from the camera).

At least it’s not like we’ll all go
extinct at the same time. Lo juro
it’ll be the brown babies in
overcrowded cities first, and
Hollywood can’t fix that, so fuck what
Hollywood says — anyhow, you already know this is true.
Which is to say, again, fuck Hollywood. Fuck Elon Musk, too.

Related: good thing brown babies can’t
talk, aren’t here to
complain or go to the movies.
Did you even consider that?
Fragile and complex and dead
without a chance to see
Interstellar on HBO?

Big-brained humans with our
symbolic-thought-I-mean-many-languages from
which to choose, yet brown babies’ll die without a
voice, get instead need-filled wails, plus
abundant opportunities to starve for …
starvation, hold their breath for …
asthmatic attacks, wish to god(s) they could’ve been born

rich, white homo sapiens strapped into that first rocket ship to
Mother Mars.

***

FN: Starve for starvation is a shout-out to Lionel Rugama’s The Earth is a Satellite of the Moon (originally in Spanish): http://bombmagazine.org/article/433/the-earth-is-a-satellite-of-the-moon

I would like to be as fearless as Lionel Rugama was.