Inside the Synagogue Is Mars, Inside Mars Is Your Apartment
—A poem for the opening of Angel Orensanz’s Installation, “Flying NASA Lab,”
1/15/04 at Oresanz Synagogue

You land on Mars and you’re never coming back
It looks like Earth because you come from Earth
Hello Mars, this is Flying NASA’s Lab Report from
Rover Spirit beaming pictures and pride explosions
You land you are free but it’s not land you land on

It’s chutzpah art, enriched detritus, covered in penguin dust
It’s Chinese Yiddish. No, Yiddish Chinese.
And It of course is Not It, but
A Red Carpet to the Stars, a Panoply
Canopy of Sky Snowing Plaster Memory

It, meanwhile, is just chilling, circling in space ballet
A woman, man, manikin in a spacesuit bikini
Recycle Mars trash art. I live in New York, Mars
My kinda planet. The fire extinguisher hisses
Chemical temple soup. The ladder

Raises an eyebrow to the sun. Look down, there’s everything!
Everything is what Mars is, and it looks exactly
Like your apartment! A synapse leaps here, goodbye
Poem to reader, hello! Send me a postcard
From Mars, sign it Angel. Drift wood drifts by

Hollywood leftovers – Movieland
Caterers’ lonely folding chairs now a mountain
On the plains of Mars, as Martian ants
Parade balance tightrope strings
Weaving the whole thing together

Big Iron snowshoes. Luckily it snowed
A crater rocked over, that is our mission
We call it the Lower East Side, twelve
Candles in a row. The melt is on!
Inside the artists’s mind, his

Hair! No! Hair goes on outside, drifting over
Angel’s forehead reflected in a black disk
That rescues the symmetry of light
What the hell is that poet doing? What
Is he talking about? What’s the meaning

Of meaning? What’s the purpose
Of purpose? What’s the use
Can I use it? It feels so good
To refuse it. Refuse to be burnt out
Refuse to interpret. Refuse to move

Refuse to refuse. Refuse to shut up
Inside the synagogue is Mars
Inside Mars is your apartment
And behind the door, an old woman
Is waving you in. Come in, she says. Please

The trip to Mars is but a jaunt, a passagiata
Walk in art, walk in artist’s mind. Walk
In poem. Walk in the synagogue of your apartment
Strolling past Mars, you keep going
Goodbye, you wave. Goodbye which means Hello