Say we found solutions to biological
issues like [spindle cells], navigated
our way through the complex ethical
implications, and successfully cloned
a human; would your clone
be just like you?
I’m not as concerned
about how my clone looks
different in my re-skinned DNA
as much as I am worried
the clone wouldn’t like the sickly life as a man-made miracle
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I am trying to understand a new word I discovered during my morning science articles and tea, the only waking ritual I’ve found soothing in this era of Moore’s Law.
Pan-sper-mia:
Or pan-sperm-ia, as my brain originally compartmentalized it,
like a panacea, an ointment transferred by nanotech to individual sperm cells in the name of 21st-century designer babies.
That’s where my imagination went, the what-ifs fueled by memory. Yet Merriam-Webster defines panspermia as,
a theory
propounded in the 19th century in opposition to
the theory of spontaneous generation
and holding that reproductive
bodies of living organisms
exist throughout
the universe,
developing wherever
the environment is favorable;
Whereas when Space.com offered Panspermia in context—when describing Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, just after Loeb said,
It is generally accepted
that the innermost region
of the Milky Way is not favorable for life;
—no “theory” was affixed, no questions posed; simply:
Even though the deck seems stacked
against life in this region,
the likelihood of panspermia,
where life is transmitted via interplanetary
or interstellar contact, would be much more
common in such a dense environment. This
process might give life a fighting chance
to arise and survive.
Panspermia
from Ancient Greek pan, meaning all
and sperma, meaning seed;
—the etymology is clear. The original meaning, once an incandescence in a hopeful, deep-space dark, since polymorphed; one form, shaped by the intellect of scientists and dreamers; another, held tightly to their chests by the religious and skeptical. Now we are left with the Wiki-bot rubble:
A hypothesis of life
existing throughout the Universe
distributed by space dust, meteoroids,
asteroids, comets, planetoids—
Like cookie-crumb trails,
And also by spacecraft
in the form of unintended
contamination by microorganisms.
extremophiles
debris ejected into space
after collisions between planets
and Solar System bodies that harbor life
organisms travelling dormant
an extended amount of time
randomly
colliding with other planets
randomly
intermingling with protoplanetary disks
under ideal impact circumstances
into a body of water, for example
and under ideal conditions
on the new planetary surface
Panspermia is not meant to address
how life began
just the method that may cause
its distribution in the Universe
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Where were you
this sense of security
while I was curled on the bathroom floor
Twenty years old, suicidal
until I fell asleep under a towel
into what’s since developed
into restless habitual sleep
II.
Where were you though, really
this sense of fortification
twenty-one years old, pushed into walls
unable to find an escape hatch
one parent in Idaho
the other, in a motel
III.
Tell me, Bastion
where to find you
in the lonely blue-dark
I’ve looked for you
in everyone
all my life
IV.
Thirty-two years old
I’m lifting a new lantern
to see if you’re somewhere
inside myself
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how many people even know
when they invoke your power?
I like to think of the universe as the first interrobang
as everything exploded from nothing to something,
as stars prepared to collide
into an exclamation and question point.
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Have you heard the adverb ⚡fluorescently⚡
in the last ten years? How about 🌒darkly,🌘 💬dully,💬
the dormant nature of color?—yet it’s not the flat
tones that make us delight, but the sudden
punches of pure red, the skin
of an orange, the banana peel that scoffs
at you in Mario Kart, before you spin out of orbit to die;
it’s the fluorescent, the burning of the brightest mouthwash,
the neon blue of a lightning bolt as it strikes rain-pattered water.
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