Poetry Thursday - Letters by Rob Walton

Letters

Dear Mercurians,
You spend half of your time complaining
about excess heat,
and fifty per cent saying you’re too cold.
Please make your minds up.

Dear Venusians,
Perhaps putting your clammy hands in your pockets
and investing in a decent vacuum cleaner
would get rid of some of that bothersome heat-trapping dust
(and save you having to import
dodgy ice from the Neptunians,
with the accompanying
exorbitant transportation fees).

Dear Humans,
Maybe you should spend
less time watching television
re-runs of The Blue Planet and
more time sorting out your thermostat.

My dear Martians,
Red is so last season.

Dear Jovians/Jupiterians,
When you’ve decided on your name,
how about considering
the old Earth adage that
size isn’t everything?

Dear Saturnians,
I’m old enough to remember
some of you playing
with a hoop and stick
and a hula hoop,
so don’t think you can
run rings round me
with all of your hoop-la.

Dear Uranians,
What exactly do you intend
to do with all those moons?
The polite and decent thing
would be to share them out.

Dear Neptunians,
Have you ever thought
about sorting out
those bright blue clouds?
I mean, you wouldn’t want
to be mistaken for Earth.
Would you?

Dear Plutonians,
Your claims were dismissed
a long time ago.
Please leave the system at once.
Please leave the system at once.

    - Rob Walton (via)

(Pluto was demoted from the status of planet to minor planet in 2006.)

Rob Walton is a writer and performer of poetry for children and adults, 

as well as short stories, scripts and flash fiction. He won the 2015 NFFD 

micro-fiction award and his poems have been published by the Emma 

Press (Slow Things), Butcher’s Dog and others. His children’s poems were 

published in Let’s Play! (Frances Lincoln).

More poems about space - and aliens - are here.