Nothing Asks to Be Created

It seems inevitable,
Barring doom, that some team will
Get around to designing

A living organism
Essentially plagiarized
At a mosaic level,

Each goodly chunk of genome,
If not every single gene,
Lifted from a different source,

Not a minimal life form,
Not moderately altered
Extant species, not a half

This and half that chimera
But a bricolage creature.
It won’t be as important

As medical genetics
Or AGI, most likely,
But someone will create one,

As soon as it can be done,
And then that will be something
Trying to live in the world.

The Opening

A person rarely generates
New patterns. Creative persons,
Persons fawned over as models

Of whatever prized behaviors,
Make preexisting patterns more
Likely to happen. Geniuses

Distort judgement, theirs and others,
And that adds new wrinkles to things,
Seems to alter reality,

But patterns are only amped up
Or tamped down. Greater risk-taking,
Often, more impulsivity,

But if a person seems the source
Of some grand creativity
Or invention, you can be sure

It is, at most, an inflection
Within the preexisting range
Of things people have always done.

Cumulative, groupish changes,
However, machines, however,
Those yield more open-ended dreams.

Oh yes, they may be nightmarish,
You bet, not a bit poetic,
But the only way you’re getting

To see something really different
In the old human way of things
Will be if it comes from the things.

Completed Worlds

Jünger started the day dreaming about an air raid. He is finishing the day by witnessing one. For once, the world is complete. More’s the pity.

War exaggerates.

Everything is more

Than was felt before.

This, from someone who

Has never known war.

Hospital beds, sure.

Multiple fractures,

Treacherous moments,

Sure, but never war.

War’s a sort of quake

For someone who has

Never been in one—

Always potential,

Storm in abeyance,

Poorly prepared for.

Any disaster

Will exaggerate

The experience.

The intensity

Scalds and scars the mind.

This is called trauma,

And sometimes trauma

Enlarges and sums

Up the details of

Worlds. More’s the pity.

Life Orthogonal to Existence at Best

Have you noticed when you feel you’ve failed
It’s mostly that you’ve failed to counter
The way the world works when left alone?

The dirty floor, the cluttered room, chores
Of all sorts, the diminishing goods,
The lack of reserves, the things that broke,

Even the dust on your shoes that need
New laces and new soles, just the world
Turning to powder when left alone.

Counter it! Counter it! Body and soul!
Think of all those children’s books you knew
In which industrious animals,

Squirrels and hens and so forth, set about
Raising some domicile, cleaning it,
Getting everything ship-shape again.

Winter sunlight rotates over you,
Rendering floating dust motes vivid.
You want to stay, not to counter it.

Richer Than Themselves

One way to see is by the sum
Of unselfconscious behaviors,
Networks of internet searches,

The overwhelming assumption
Being that, in not being framed,
Here lies the unvarnished person,

The sum of all private actions.
Be cautious when falling for this.
It may be true everyone lies

And true the faces people show
Aren’t like the faces people hide.
But every view remains partial,

Skewed by the views of the viewers.
Medical imaging can find
Blood clots, healed fractures, and tumors

A body swimming at the beach
In bright sunshine and clear water
Would never display to the world,

But the internal injuries,
Hidden wounds, and gathering doom
Aren’t all of the body even,

Not nearly the whole of the life.
At night, the swimmer might search webs
Of information on symptoms,

In between shopping for swimsuits,
But the body and the person
In the waves were more than someone.