Senryu #3-6: The 'First On Mars' Series

Consume each Senryu individually, as you would four small courses in a tasting menu. There is a requisite pause between each one.

The first man on Mars

is also first to die so

far away from home

 

 

**********************

 

 

First Man, expired,

offered the life we zipped to

study in red dust

 

 

***********************

 

 

He who first returns

from Mars is the first Martian

to invade the world

 

 

************************

 

 

The first dust boy who

tilts and spies on oceans, blue…

We'd call him Savior

Reviews

[KAin]

Quite
the curious series, here - science and religion, ideas of truth and
perception, faith and a curious surge of an amnesiac loyalty to a new
concept. The ominous idea of a return, the mention of a wayward
saviour, a promise of salvation... But salvation for whom? There is a
suggestion of a final and lasting innocence in the end, beneath the
undercurrent of a curious wordless fear, that only seems to grow with
each successive senryu. Impressive work!

[K.N. Lorenzen]

I hope you got my message. But this is really, really great!!

[Thaddius]

I'm glad that you receive from this. That your antennae can pick up on these wavelengths. Thanks for reading!

[AYVID N]

I liked all the senryus because each is original and offers a new thought to the reader in a clever package. The senryus talk about a 'first' in relation to our future association with Mars which is thought provoking and an interesting concept. I find it all the more fascinating as I love Sci-fi and most avid readers do.

The second I liked best as it makes me think of 'dust unto red dust'.

I agree with Nusquam in that you are one of the very few writers here who keep trying to challenge their own boundaries. I am beginning to expect - Always something new - From you!

[Thaddius]

thanks. I almost want to expand on this. The first one was originally going to be the only one - it was meant to be a stand alone, allegorical type thing. I don't know that anyone can think of them that way in the series - it's too rooted in the mars narrative at this point. The isolation that goes with innovation or self-discovery, a temporal paradox, the bolstering and backwards media machine, the self-generating seeds of myth, faith, science, and superstition... these are some of the things I touched on in these. But they are so literal and so expandable, I think a reader would have to truly search for the unifying threads that connect dots such as 'dust', 'First Man' (Adam) to 'Savior', 'life' (life on mars doubling as the lost life of the first colonizer), and fathom my twisted vision of an eternal earth-mars ping pong match, where the dreamer becomes the unnamed explorer who becomes the lauded hero who follows in his foot steps who paves the way for a new civilization which looks up to the new planet and conceives life there far before it is feasible in a godlike way. My main point is how the life on Mars and the ideas of religion, in my humble view, are conceptually generated within ourselves. I think I need to spell this out more for it to come across to most people

[AYVID N]

I appreciate the deeper connect between science and religion you have made here. Also the temporal paradox. I guess you could spell it out more... but the senryus are great to read as they are. Looking forward to more of such writing from you.

[Thaddius]

thanks - just posted a poem about a childhood pet!

[Nusquam Esse]

Kudos to you for writing poems in a Sci-fi setting! Very few poets seem willing to do this these days, which I find sad, no will to challenge or push their boundaries. For kicks and giggles (and this will be hard), try writing a haiku ON mars (no, not literally), as if from a season on that planet. (Seasonal word, and cutting phrase). Only problem I see here is that expired is actually supposed to be pronounced in 3 syllables, meaning that line has 6. But such a small discrepancy is minute, and considering that it is possible to say with 2, I would not fret over it. My favorite of these is actually number 3, love the imagery of a man stepping out of the ship to cheering crowds, invading them... taken to 'their leader' for an award ceremony! And finally, for a bit of fun trivia, since we are dealing with a Japanese poetry structure... Mars is written as 火星 (kasei) in Japanese, which literally means Fire-Star, much how we call it the Red Planet. 火星には生物の形跡だったかな