Mars will start in 5 or 6 years,
so will be done in parallel with the Moon.
Got high, spent low, one late the other soon—
ambition’s wasted wallet in arrears,
and one-way ticket starved for volunteers;
youth’s astronautic dreamsong changes tune:
our Captain Kirks would rather game and goon
than boldly go. For want of pioneers
in this sublunary haters’ world I wept
for worlds as-yet unreached by colonists,
and lay in bed, and thinly beat my gold—
perhaps it was the company I kept?
That I deigned friend a few phrenologists?
I came to see and conquer. But I scrolled.