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Comment found @ Ed-Op article from the LA Times about the Martian probe Spirit;
I like it as a poem on it's own,
and really enjoy the writing in the opinion section in general.

frediano at 7:27 AM May 28, 2011
Much more important would have been the effort to do so.
50 years.   The tribe balked.   We presented our sad pictures of Detroit and (the) Applachis and said,  "How  can we make this effort when there are so many problems down here on Earth?"  After 80 years of New Deal and 50 years of Great Society, how do those sad pictures of Detroit and Applachia look today?   
We've forgone the opportunity for mankind all over the world today to lookup and see the lights of the base on the Moon, in exchange for replacing stills with Meth labs.
Gradients drive everything.   
Lack of gradient in this universe is death.
The effort to place colonies on the Moon and Mars colonies represents gradient.   JFK's imploring this nation 50 years ago was a spark that briefly reinvigorated technological gradient in a nation that had just placed its last star on the flag.
Our economies have been living on the remnants of that once technological gradient for decades. Making bitmaps dance  in the service of selling cell phone ads to kids and boner medicine to the Boomers on social networks is a sad subsititue for technological gradient.
A couple obituaries recently;
Lenora Carrington and Gil Scott Heron

I'm thinking dying is
Just
The
Best
Way
to be remembered.
And no,
this isn't fatalistic in the least.
Actually,
I stand in Zen Critique
of Death's bad reputation,
and how silly a nom de guerre
it really is.
Because,
for the collective objective mind
or the delicate breast,
death is just the simplest way  
to priceless immortality.
Goodbye...
to a better place.
A community where
it's heart   is
as open as the sky,
and
"it's ocean has a center".

Damien Crisp, Slavehttp://www.damiencrisp.com/slave-expanded.html
aimless face day

Leonora Carrington died yesterday.
Children of the Universe, us,
We compared the holes where our wisdom teeth
had ached, tongues soft with velvet lollings.
I belong and deserve better, and more,
a birthmark strawberry wiped across
my sweaty playful brow.
We played pretend, imitating the dramas taught
last sunday from big screens blaring
from the corner of a taupe classroom,
hung with inspirational cartoons.

And we were together everywhere,
having the fun of locusts,
entertained with slowly blackening the sun.
Observing ant hills, we were disgusted and fascinated,
wanting to see them stop, and with
hands flapping madly, I shrieked for Father.
But Mum was the one; she gathered up the poisons,
casting a sharp shadow while spritzing the insects
back into dust as my friend clapped, dancing.
We're climbing the tree, the very same,
A venusian Maple comical, its
standing next to the dying Walnut,
while tornado chain link yawns below.
Our arms, taut across inner elbows,
longer than usual, are up-stretched, grasping.
A rogue honeysuckle quells the stink of
Immanuel Baptist and tarp's standing water.

She trusts a profile and upraised brows
My god-daughter; her name is Heaven,
and she believes anything.
Demeanor slipping, my face is cracking,
my throat and tongue are telling,
she sneaks a peek, she wants my hair.
Stick straight, white hair, another odd distraction.

Tranquilized I talk too much,
beginning to babble conspiratorially
to a child of nine.

Heaven Honey, listen to me.
"Trust no one, no I don't.
You have eyes on your back,
use them often and wisely.
Heaven, sweetheart, listen here,
fear is no talisman,
and no better a parent."