If We Go to Mars

Will we do it all again if we go to Mars?

Among my stars and sighs

I look at you with batting eyes

Does not my soul lay bare before you?

If we go to Mars

Will we still value fancy cars?

What awaits our arrival on this red desert?

Who among us could make the Sea of Galilee?

You invest in making new water

Yet did not care for what was in your keep.

Who among you knows the aches

That these worn feet did make?

What are we doing with new vision?

Were these not dreams we once had?

What if we were to dissent on this rusty land?

Can it handle the weight of conflict?

Will we ruin ourselves on alien sand?

How many tongues will we speak?

Will the mighty crush the meek?

Is extracting all that is possible?

Is it all our future will know?

Do they see me living on this foreign dirt?

They want to colonize space

To escape this place and the sorrows it sewn.

What will it be like to bring chains in space?

Will they clatter as they float?

They are the ghosts that haunt us;

The skeletons in our closets

The boxes left unopened

The attics are filled with the legacies

Of things that were once stolen

From people that no one can remember

Or recount who first encountered them

Does one stop feeling shame in space?

Or does ego still hold on?

Relics of times since passed by

Burns our hands as we cling to what was never ours

Is this what we want?

How long will it go on?

What are we against?

Whose land will we toil?

Will we share our meals at kitchen tables?

How many families will seed these lands?

How many will have to lie about what happened

When they speak about what they left behind?

Would that not be the greatest one of all?