Life on Mars Quotes

“everything/ that ever was still is, somewhere”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“listen: the dark we've only ever imagined now audible, thrumming,
marbled with static like gristly meat. a chorus of engines churns.

silence taunts: a dare. everything that disappears
disappears as if returning somewhere.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“Once upon a time, a woman told this to her daughter: Save yourself. The girl didn’t think to ask for what? She looked into her mother’s face and answered Yes. Years later, alone in the room where she lives The daughter listens to the life she’s been saved from: Evening patter. Summer laughter. Young bodies Racing into the unmitigated happiness of danger.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“time never stops, but does it end? and how many lives
before take-off, before we find ourselves
beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread,
Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water
From a village without a well, then living
One or two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“some like to imagine
a cosmic mother watching through a spray of stars,

mouthing 'yes, yes' as we toddle towards the light,
biting her lip of we teeter at some ledge. longing
to sweep us to her breast, she hopes for the best.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“The Weather In Space

Is God being pure force? The wind
Or what commands it? When our lives slow
And we can hold all that we love, it sprawls
In our laps like a gangly doll. When the storm
Kicks up and nothing is ours, we go chasing
After all we're certain to lose, so alive ---
Faces radiant with panic.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“sometimes, what i see is a library in a rural community.
all the tall shelves in the big open room. and the pencils
in a cup at circulation, gnawed on by the entire population.

the books have lived here all along, belonging
for weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence
of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face,

a pair of eyes. the most remarkable lies.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“[...] the body is what we lean toward,
tensing as it darts, dancing away.
but it's the voice that enters us. even
saying nothing. even saying nothing
over and over absently to itself”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“from time to time, i think of him watching me
from over the top of his glasses, or eating candy

from a jar. i remember thanking him each time
the session was done. but mostly what i see
is a human hand reaching down to lift
a pebble from my tongue”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“the hours
plink past like water from a window a/c. we sweat it out,
teach ourselves to wait. silently, lazily, collapse happens.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“We saw to the edge of all there is -

So brutal and alive it seemed to comprehend us back.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“I didn't want to wait on my knees
In a room made quiet by waiting.

A room where we'd listen for the rise
Of breath, the burble in his throat.

I didn't want the orchids or the trays
Of food meant to fortify that silence,

Or to pray for him to stay or to go then
Finally toward that ecstatic light.

I didn't want to believe
What we believe in those rooms:

That we are blessed, letting go,
Letting someone, anyone,

Drag open the drapes and heave us
Back into our blinding, bright lives.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“Old loves turn up in dreams, still livid at every slight.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“Just like the life
In which I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky
Thinking one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands
Even if it burns.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure

That someone was there squinting through the dust,
Saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only
To be wanted back badly enough?”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“When Your Small Form Tumbled into Me"

I lay sprawled like a big-game rug across the bed:
Belly down, legs wishbone-wide. It was winter.
Workaday. Your father swung his feet to the floor.
The kids upstairs dragged something back and forth
On shrieking wheels. I was empty, blown-through
By whatever swells, swirling, and then breaks
Night after night upon that room. You must have watched
For what felt like forever, wanting to be
What we passed back and forth between us like fire.
Wanting weight, desiring desire, dying
To descend into flesh, fault, the brief ecstasy of being.
From what dream of world did you wriggle free?
What soared — and what grieved — when you aimed your will
At the yes of my body alive like that on the sheets?”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“while the father storms through adjacent rooms
ranting with the force of kingdom come,
not caring anymore what might snap us in its jaw”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“The best was having nothing. No hope. No name in the throat. And finding the breath in you, the body, to ask.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“So why do we insist
He has vanished, that death ran off with our
Everything worth having? Why not that he was
Swimming only through this life--his slow,
Graceful crawl, shoulders rippling,

Legs slicing away at the waves, gliding
Further into what life itself denies?
He is only gone so far as we can tell. Though
When I try, I see the white cloud of his hair
In the distance like an eternity.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“Look, I want to say, The worst thing you can imagine has already Zipped up its coat and is heading back Up the road to wherever it came from.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“So much we once coveted. So much
That would have saved us, but lived,

Instead, its own quick span, returning
To uselessness with the mute acquiescence

Of shed skin. It watches us watch it:
Our faulty eyes, our telltale heat, hearts

Ticking through our shirts. We’re here
To titter at gimcracks, the naïve tools,

The replicas of replicas stacked like bricks.
There’s green money, and oil in drums.

Pots of honey pilfered from a tomb. Books
Recounting the wars, maps of fizzled stars.

In the south wing, there’s a small room
Where a living man sits on display. Ask,

And he’ll describe the old beliefs. If you
Laugh, he’ll lower his head to his hands

And sigh. When he dies, they’ll replace him
With a video looping on ad infinitum.

Special installations come and go. “Love”
Was up for a season, followed by “Illness,”

Concepts difficult to grasp. The last thing you see
(After a mirror—someone’s idea of a joke?)

Is an image of an old planet taken from space.
Outside, vendors hawk t-shirts, three for eight.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“we like to think of it as parallel to what we know
only bigger. one man against the authorities.
or one man against a city of zombies. one man

who is not, in fact, a man, sent to understand
the caravan of men now chasing him like red ants
let loose down the pants of america. man on the run.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“I walked through, and my eyes Swallowed everything, no matter How it cut. To bleed was my prize:
I was free, nobody’s daughter, Perfecting an easy weightless laughter.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“I am writing this so it will stay true.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“Maybe the dead know, their eyes widening at last,
Seeing the high beams of a million galaxies flick on
At twilight.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“time never stops, but does it end? and how many live/before take-off, before we find ourselves/beyond ourselves, all glam-glow, all twinkle and gold?”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“RANSOM

When the freighters inch past in the distance
The men load their small boats. They motor out,
Buzzing like mosquitoes, aimed at the iron
Side of the blind ship as it creeps closer.

They have guns. They know the sea like it
Is their mother, and she is not well. Her fish
Are gone. She heaves barrels leaking disease
Onto the shores. When she goes into a fit,

She throws a curse upon the land, dragging
Houses, people to their deaths. She glows
In a way she should not. She tastes of industry.
No one is fighting for her, and so they fight.

By night, they load their boats and motor out,
And by day, they aim their guns at the ships,
Climbing aboard. It is clear what they want.
The white men scramble. Some fight back.

When one is taken, the whole world sits up
To watch. When the pirates fall, the world
Smiles to itself, thanking goodness. They
Show the black faces and the dead black bodies

On TV. When the pirates win, after the great
White ships return to their own shores,
There is a party that lasts for days.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“the life
In which I’m forever a child looking out my window at the night sky
Thinking one day I’ll touch the world with bare hands
Even if it burns.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems

“Marbled with static like gristly meat.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars: Poems