reworked: marsilani (paint the town red)

They named this town “Look to the Sky.”
What did they mean?

Lower to middle class
Suburbanites
who moved here in the late 60’s
Likely thought it apt:
Hope,
look up,
and you too can someday reach the stars.

Maybe they meant
the town itself was the sky
and everyone else
should look to it:
a “city on a hill.”
After all, its streets were named
after heavenly bodies:
Meheula meant “the path of the sun”
And Aohoku was Hawaiian for Jupiter.
(Did that make the people the stars,
Or just the empty spaces?)

But I think the name wasn’t meant
a promise or a boast
It was a signpost
And we’ve all mistaken
the finger for the moon.

Look up!
Look to the sky!

Don’t see it?
Then look down.
Ancient tectonic rifts buckle
the sidewalk concrete in places.
The floor of the town
is superimposed over the earth
like bandaid over wound.

Still don’t see it?
Then look around.
Look at your neighbors,
your classmates,
your friends.
Look closely,
Squint.
You’ll agree
Everyone’s so perfectly ordinary-
perfectly ordinary.
Are they for real?
(For that matter, are you?)

If you still can’t see,
Look up!
Really look up.
If you do,
all you’ll see, through the telescope lens
and haze of street lamp,
is a glass mirrored ceiling.

And where your reflection should be,
Standing in the midst of this town,
you’ll see, far above you,
the planet Mars:
blood soiled,
canal scarred,
rumored of life,
certain of war;
and a Martian,
searching for intelligent life.

Mars:
where you come from
where you’re going
where you always already are.

I’ll make things painfully obvious for you:
I’ll paint the town red,
the same red as the dirt stains covered up.
It does us good in the long run
Not to pretend things are anything else.

Painfully obvious:
The old name doesn’t work
It obfuscates
So I’ll change the name to Mars-ilani:
town of past futures
and futures passed,
where we aliens,
shy of escape velocity,
find home
away from
home.