View From Mars Poem by Alessandra Liverani

Imagine being a Martian and peering down on earth
And puzzling and puzzling for all your Martian brain was worth
Why were those funny earthians standing in the street
And sucking on those little logs, you might have to admit defeat

With seven fingers and two triple jointed thumbs, you'd scratch your furry, green head
Because even from up on Mars, you'd know those logs would make you dead
The smell alone that you detected from your ten nostrils perched upon your ear
Was enough to instil in you a horrifying fear

That these earthians had been visited from some aliens out in space
Some nasty, vicious aliens who did not like the human race
And these aliens had then programmed some of our precious human kind
By writing a cruel virus prepared specially for the delicate human mind

If you were such a Martian, you'd be shaking in your twenty pairs of shoes
Because you knew it could be possible, that you'd hear it on the Martian news
That this virus had jumped planets, gone across to Mars from Earth
And of you verdant, martial Martians, there was now a severe dearth

(Sydney, Australia - 2003)