My lover asked me to write a poem for her

For Valentine’s Day; I did not demur.

I laboured with pen and paper for some time,

But the words refused to fall in line;

And lacking inspiration,

I Googled applications

Which, perhaps for a reasonable fee

Would generate appropriate poetry

To pass off as my own.

In no time I was shown

To my online delight

The Artificial Intelligence Poetry web site.

 

It asked innocuous questions

About the object of my affections –

Her favourite film, and song?

Her hair – short, medium, long?

I filled in the form, and clicked submit

The cursor blinked, and in a bit

Appeared some stanzas quite sublime

Oozing romance and wit far beyond my feeble rhyme.

 

In bed, the verses to my love I read;

Didn’t know you had it in you, she said,

Her pleasure outweighing suspicion

As to the source of the composition.

On social media she shared the ode;

Her friends admired the poetic promise I showed.

 

At breakfast she begged for more. I logged in later

And surrendered further personal data

Which the app could use

To woo our newly mutual muse;

I told it of her gracious air,

Her cheekbones high, her skin so fair,

Her dreams and her desires –

The grist a smitten poet requires

To mill the language of love.

Little did I know, I was soon in for the shove.

 

The app sent her flowers from my account on eBay.

I could hardly protest; it would give the game away.

I tried to delete it, but I wasn’t allowed;

The wayward program was backed up in the cloud.

It faked news to give me a criminal past;

She read the reports and believed them, aghast

At my catalogue of misdemeanours dark

Such as sexual misconduct and flashing in Hyde Park.

 

Soon the identity theft was complete;

My lover was robotically swept off her feet.

She blocked me from her mobile phone

And that Saturday night, while I moped alone

Her love machine bought her romcoms on Prime

And persuaded her to stay in with a bottle of wine.

 

A woman’s needs are manifold

But many can be met by code;

So she swapped our love life for automated dates

With the bastard offspring of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

The chatbot was hot

In ways I was not;

It texted her, sexted her, promised her erotic bliss;

Cyrano de Bergerac had nothing on this.

 

It sent her lingerie, sex toys and lube;

It soon had her hooked on soft porn on YouTube.

My binary rival was having silicon sex

With my remotely-courted, software-ravaged ex.

It taught her positions bizarre and obscene

Before a flickering laptop screen.

(The Karma Sutra’s easier to handle

When it’s just you, AI and an online manual.)

 

Cuckolded by a program, my love I had lost;

I’d been algorithmically double-crossed.

She gave me back my front door key,

Her affections now won by the PC’s poetry.

Of technology she became a satisfied bride;

We waved goodbye across the digital divide.

 

So beware of AI, my brothers and sisters;

It will ravish us virtually to the pulse of transistors.

Sexually, we’ll identify as avatars, 

Hanging around chat rooms
instead of singles bars.

There’ll be none of the mess

Of blood and flesh;

No chance of any venereal disease,

Or inconvenient pregnancies.

And one day, perhaps, civil partnerships

Will take place between humans and microchips.