The Invitation

We dearly wish that you would join, in time,

A future found unbound among the stars.

We realize this for you means quite a climb

From lunar foothills barely past the start.

We must remark it's strange that so complex

An animal as yours should live in hives.

Our scientists believe that this reflects

Potential genius living bounded lives.

Perhaps to reach the stars you must boycott

This self-sustaining, self-destructive course

If so, we'll find your kind and ours are not

So different as intrigued us at the first.

Despair that you can't make it now? Don't fear.

Just as you're stuck there, we are stuck here.

Little Green Woman

I made tracks for the other side of everything known,

A place where I'm an alien, the place where she is home.

A place where an adventure could be something that you eat,

A place that's full of people just a little bit like me.

One of them took me by the hand, began the universal dance,

Then stopped in the middle to apprise me of conflicting circumstance.

There's part of me still panting, insisting this could work,

But I'm not really Captain Kirk.

Shock the Monkey

I'm caught in a quandry between my brain and my eyes.

The one insists on depth, the other merely size,

But in a dazzling display of both variety and scope,

While the one has thrown off training like an undesired yolk.

My better angels try to tell me when–and not–to try,

While the TV shows me goals enough to fill my insect eyes.

I can change everything I am to get what I'm told I want,

Or be only what I am, and mostly pleased with what I've got.

Twinkle, Twinkle

You eat yourself to change yourself,

To power your strange, unknown place.

The lives of every single one of my kind

Strung together beginning-to-end

You would outlive with time to spare;

It would take us that long just to get there.

You are a real-life wonder of an alien world,

So it is only natural that some people

Might look to you to learn their future,

But I think it is even more beautiful,

and I know that it must be more sensible

To look to you to learn your prehistoric past.

Not Hard, But Very Difficult (Kids Poem for Teaching)

My job is not very hard to explain.

They pay me money to fly an airplane.

Who am I?

Red Hot (Kids Poem For Teaching)

When I drive down the street, everybody else knows.

Some people tell me that I'm a hero.

My job and my truck, you could say, are red hot.

I put out fires that others cannot.

Who am I?

In Day or In Night (Kids Poem for Teaching)

My job is important: keep everyone safe.

I arrest bad guys and put them away.

I must be ready in day or in night.

I drive a car that has red and blue lights.

Who Am I?