OODAD:
I love the odd time signature and metrical permutations of Mars!
Me, too! Please see lines highlighted in yellow.
FROM MARS, WITH LOVE , by Andrew J. Vincent [unabridged version]
Does it not stand to reason that the destruction of one's home should prompt one to seek out new worlds?
The Metalunans did so eons ago, yet the attitude displayed toward their newfound hosts, while not entirely benevolent, was closer to humanistic than that shown us miserable humans by the Martians. Why do I refer to ourselves as miserable humans? The decimation of the human race by an alien force cruel and invincible has given rise to such sentiments of despair. The degradation that precedes the most unspeakable of protracted life-terminating procedures would make the tortures invented by human history's most notorious villains appear little more than those devised by schoolyard bullies.
I regret that I have survived the initial attack.
I haven't much time. Conflict is on the horizon, moving ever closer toward us. Our being a peace-loving people does not mean that we are weak and ineffectual. Yet, by comparison to the powers that are to be, we shall constitute their easiest prey. We are no match for their kind. What is this alien force - so fearsome and implacable - that marches in relentless asymmetrical rhythm: triplet, crotchets, quavers, crotchet? I shudder that such uncommon and foreign a meter should, nevertheless, bring NEMESIS unfailingly to his quarry. Perhaps I ought not to register any surprise at all. My only palpable emotion at this time is convulsing fear - an unholy terror that engulfs every delectable morsel of many a quivering corpse. Corpses lusted after by a famished Martian megalopolis squatted illegally upon Earth.
An angry red dust that enshrouds their military machine has reached us, parching our throats, infiltrating our lungs. The carrying wind is bitter and cuts deeply to the core. The descent and ascent of their chromatic war chant fills me with horror as I contemplate the formidable and merciless aspect of these damnable creatures, they who advance slowly but deliberately toward the termination of our race. I hear the brassy salvos of their ordnance. Yet again ... the protracted cacophony of mechanized warfare. NEMESIS is angry. There will be no mercy shown toward our weak, human ilk. He is red. He is MARS, THE BRINGER OF WAR....
Why these war-beasts have kept me on I haven't a clue. Perhaps my ruddy complexion is a reminder of the basic hue of a home deserted yet scarcely forgotten. I cannot by any stretch of the imagination - and there's been a great deal of such "stretching" lately attribute to these coarse and loathsome creatures any delicate sentiment characteristic of our gentler race. These Martians are scorpions - they are malefactors to the most extreme degree.
Upon first sighting of the alien beings, we humans found ourselves both inescapably transfixed by their revolting semblance of a face and, subsequently, retching with violent abandon, overcome as we were by their unimaginable hideousness. My viewing INVADERS FROM MARS when a child could not have prepared me for what started out as a little boy's nightmare. Now-extinguished friends had earlier tossed off the initial radio contact from the Martians as a higher power's benign interest in an inferior intelligence.
Such fatuous naivete has cost us dearly.