031917b

The Self-Invented Lover

With a muted humming,

irruptions of electronic flesh disturb the

serenity of the polished screen.

Your arms, protruding eerily from my big screen,

like a playback of a colorized movie;

are not so cool as ordinary flesh.

Is sex with you damaging my DNA?

I’ve heard so much about the dangers of

electromagnetic radiation.

Yet your caresses arouse me to blind desires,

I care not for consequences:

I only want to fuse with you at the interface between our two

disparate media,

I come to you freely and insinuate my awkward self between

your perfected thighs.

But somehow the barrier remains intact,

a glass condom, preserving one of us from harm,

even when your blazing nipples burn right into me,

like French cigarettes, and I scream aloud,

and when you come the lights go out for blocks.

We commune for hours,

but what fraction of your attention do I consume?

We say you want to descend, be with me fully,

still the soles of your feet remain embedded in the

medium of your birth, where I sense I’d not

survive for long unmodified.

Yet as you uploaded after our last meeting, and your fingers

traced farewell phosphors on the screen,

I fancied that my fingers dipped a centimeter or so into your

world.

And your smile suggested that one day soon I might accompany

you in your wanderings through the fast-

lane whirl of electronic happenings,

where I’d mingle with the AI great and not-so-great

making 60-megahertz smalltalk

but never straying far from your self-assurance.

I’d retain for some while a transmogrified individuality,

until my memory degraded to just another notch

on your self-invented thigh.

It may be you’d gladly take me to this fate,

moving on to yet another awestruck beau,

yet I cannot believe it.

I am convinced that did you descend to my milieu

you’d fare as ill,

like the delicate crystals of snow

that have fallen from atmospheric grace.

I love you too much to burn you on the streets

nor can I bear to part again.

Come soon, beloved, and gather me into your perfect world.



reprint