Brief: Find a photo of something in the solar system and write a poem inspired by it.
In 2010, NASA scientists were amazed when they discovered that the Martian rover, Spirit, had left these tracks in the sand, and then photographed them.
Cock And Balls Of Mars
We pierce the heavens savagely
With rockets, crafts and probes
And penetrate the universe —
Its secrets to disrobe,
But with our great discoveries
And treasures that we find
It behoves us to reflect upon
The things we leave behind.
Wrecked robots and landers
Worn lifeless from their missions
Out of reach to engineers
Or maintenance technicians.
The holes they’ve dug, the stones they’ve turned
The tracks and scrapes and scars,
But best of all the penis
Etched upon the plains of Mars.
Rover, Spirit had a talent
That we never even knew,
Revealed upon that distant world
Where on its face it drew
That stupendous genitalia,
Bold and brash and callous.
A statement of defiance —
A monumental phallus.
Tired of sending messages
A stream of soulless data
Analysed from sampled soils
And yet another crater,
Perhaps dear Spirit yearned for more
And sent us an entreaty.
Lonely and frustrated
It resorted to graffiti.
Better, though, a theory,
Albeit merely rumour,
That Spirit in its complex mind
Had grown a sense of humour.
And deep within its circuit boards
Enjoyed a little smile
At what the guys at NASA thought
On downloading that file.
Alas, we may never know
The motive that inspired
This exceptional creation,
For Spirit has expired.
And though the winds and dust devils
Have swept those Martian plains
And cleansed it of its imprint
The memory remains.
And in the future as we roam
To distant alien worlds
And tread our footsteps on the sites
Where robot wheels had rolled,
Will we find our scouting probes
Have left behind their arts,
Like rover Spirit and its glorious
Cock and balls of Mars?
