The First Artist on Mars

Well, the first professional artist
There were scientists who, you know
dabbled
but NASA sent us –
me and two photographers –
to build support for the program.

The best day?
That was in Marineris.
Those canyons are huge
each wall a planet
turned on its side.
I did a power of painting there.

You can see all my work
at the opening. Do come.
Hey, they wanted me to paint propaganda –
you know, ‘our brave scientists at work’ –
but I told them
you’ll get nothing but the truth from me

I just paint what I see
and let others worry
what the public think.
Still, the agency can’t be too displeased.
They’re sponsoring my touring show.
That’s coming up next spring.

Would I go back? Don’t know.
It’s a hell of a distance
and my muscles almost got flabby
in the low G. Took me ages
to recover — lots of gym and water time
when I should have been painting.

But Jupiter would be worth the trip!
Those are awesome landscapes
those moons, each one’s so different.
Mars is OK — so old, so red,
so vertical. Quite a place
but limited, you know?

(c) Tim Jones

First published in Blackmail Press 15 (May 2006); republished in Tim’s second poetry collection, “All Blacks’ Kitchen Gardens” (HeadworX, 2007)

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About The Poem:

When I featured The First Artist On Mars on 20 July 2010—soon after I first started blogging and joined the Tuesday Poem community—he wrote that the poem

“…forms part of a sequence about the exploration of Mars called “Red Stone”. That sequence was inspired by Kim Stanley Robinson’s superb Mars Trilogy, but this rather conceited artist is entirely my own invention.”

I must admit that I have always loved the artist’s “rather conceited” voice, while the poem speaks to my love of astronomy, space exploration, and science fiction—all loves that I know intersect with Tim’s own interests. I am a fan of both Tim’s poetry and his short stories and am very pleased to be re-posting his previous “…on Anything, Really” featured poems over the next few weeks—an excellent way, I hope, to shine the spotlight on the poet.
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About The Poet:

Tim Jones is a New Zealand poet, author and editor who was awarded both the New Zealand Society of Authors Janet Frame Memorial Award for Literature and a Sir Julius Vogel Award in 2010. His latest book, co-edited with PS Cottier, is The Stars Like Sand: Australian Speculative Poetry (2014).

For more, see http://timjonesbooks.blogspot.com/
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To read the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here.