Martian Gothic (short)
Unique environment unique people.
Fifteen thousand metre mountain vertical south face.
Two pretty Goth girls stood on the edge.
One footstep fall to Martian plateau.
Three hundred metres ahead thirty metre layer of Cirrus cloud.
Terraforming worked brilliantly Earth like atmosphere.
Olympus Mons great holiday destination for East European adventurers.
Hanneke had waist length black hair,
Silge shoulder length red hair with lip piercings.
Both beautiful like the magnificent sci-fi film landscape.
Chance to hike,
enjoy stunning views after their Earth based Martian Geology course and field trip.

Martian Gothic
It was a unique environment.
They were unique people in a unique place.
A mountain fifteen thousand metres high with a vertical south face.
Two pretty Goth girls stood on the edge.
One footstep forward and it was a huge fall to the Martian plateau.
Three hundred metres in front of the girls was a fine layer of Cirrus cloud,
thirty metres thick.
The Terraforming had worked brilliantly providing a heavy Earth like atmosphere on Mars.
Olympus Mons was a great holiday destination for young East European adventurers like Hanneke and Silge.
Hanneke had waist length black hair and Silge shoulder length red hair with lip piercings.
Both were equally beautiful as the magnificent landscape straight out of a sci-fi film.
They were taking time out of their Earth based Martian Geology course after a short field trip.
A quick hike was a chance to chill out and take in the stunning views.

they are very rough when they sing
their vibratos are intergalactic
high and zigzagged with enormous BOOMS!
and crash into sky
and into Earth

but on Earth they translate the sounds to be birds
and bird wings—they’ve come to call it:
an ornithological phenomenon
how these tiny bodies can emit crashing sounds
from their larynx and feathers
and make them echo around the solar system
is a mystery or two

but no one suspects them
on top of their mountains
surrounded by red sand
tracked with utility vehicles, rovers,
so succulent-free
that you aim to drink the earth
and blink when their proximals help them float
against a martian cold

they bring to the desert false colours;
hues of yellows, greens, and purples
and behind them they leave feathers,
ticklish things to be found by astronaut-scientists
citizens of sand and rocks
which accumulate as field notes tell of their history:
they won’t be catalogued
but they will be arranged by locality

Have you ever been
Encaptured by the stars?

Have you ever wanted
To fly away to Mars?

Have you ever wanted
To exist in Outer Space?
But not to exist
Within our space.

Have you ever wanted
To fly up, up so high?
Because the high down on Earth
Is really just a lie.

Have you ever wanted
To land upon a Sun?
Though you know that you’d burn,
Before you got to touch one.

Have you ever wanted
To travel to a far away place?
Well, what farther is there
Than this vast land we call

“Space”

The ground does not yield as I make my way

unsteady across the dirt mounds and bone-dry grasses

in the brittle frost of the early deep freeze.

It’s almost as cold as Mars at the equator, I find myself thinking.

I dream

of butterscotch evenings, and landscapes tanned

red and brown and meandering canals

clear straight to the bottom.

This is Bradbury’s Mars.

I close my eyes and stroll among the ancient ruins

until the cold drives me back into the chaos again.


The last rocket for Mars left a long time ago

and I am stuck on Earth to freeze.

I will be his Venus
He will be my Mars
Together we create love

In rock pools, tiny claws dual over colourful crowns
that were sent across the seas from the Gods.
The deadliest of gems sought for in crustacean kingdoms
like power.


Fish hide in bottles and swallow plastic shrimp,
while flotsam and jetsam decorate the shore;
toxic borders.


Albatross, guardian bird of the waters
we stopped looking up to you,
we stopped looking behind us to see if you were following
when we could fly higher, fly faster...
Jet power, metal wings, turbo engine.


Our good omens
Became measured.
Our superstitions
Became statistics.


I cry for all the canaries trapped in coal mines.
While we look for life on Mars
I feel dead on this ship,
but it's still floating, floating...

I was a lost girl in the Mars—
looking for the crisp melody of air that I can breathe in,
looking for a shivery place to melt my vested warmth that burning as a flame,
looking for mortal who I can able to talk with in the cosmos where I'm the only living thing.

Until he came, an astronaut who saved me from the torment—
he held my hand as we go to his world, the earth:
with a refreshing wind that I used to breath in and out whenever I told myself to calm down as my tears kisses my cheeks,
with a wintry place that I used to experience whenever the atmosphere became cold due of my icy heart,
with someone that I used to talked with who changed when there's a lot of living things fooling around him.

I once a lost girl with my own world and back to it again—
but now, with his universe that filled with metaphors.