Creative destruction is her specialty
Physical, mental, moral
I survive, but not as me
Am I and who
And when will this person slip away?
Will it be a blaze of thunder and glycerin,
A hooded decapitation
Or a slow rot on an everyman cot
Only such a small nick from her shrapnel
Bled away my spirit's virtue
Where was I hit?
I am resolved
Not to even learn my name this time
For it is, but a focus for her rage
And a mortal score for her to keep

My heart is Mars
A red orb in my chest
The ancients called, "god of war,"
For red and bright and passionate it was.
Dry it is now and dusty
With only some occasional magnetism
Not enough for an atmosphere
To enchant joy and heat.
It becomes a brittle rock each night.
Some claim to see evidence of departed life
Or hold out hope for a few mites
That friction might lightning strike into something alive.
"Look," they say at this surface scar or
That sunken crater that threw chunks of red matter into a vacuumed void
Surely it is alien, proved.
What strange life was held in its clutches.
They like to take pictures, write fiction
Speak of daydreamed visits
And proclamate promised futures,
But it is only the rovers who are loyal
They who come and stay.

I tread through Terra's troughs
See how she has no notice of me
Her peak's gaze fixed on some part of herself
Then thoughts like a throng of tarpon
Mass a megrim around me
Every eager eye flies nigh
"Why, why, why..."
She questions me
It was my heart that answered
And in a heartbeat she is gone
Leaving her mist all about me
Fragrant angelica for the footing
A spice seasoning my animal spirit
Yearning for many miles before I realize
It is only clover through which I strolled
And not the perfume of a comet's tail.