{"id":20503,"date":"2016-08-13T13:52:41","date_gmt":"2016-08-13T17:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/?p=20503"},"modified":"2016-08-14T14:47:41","modified_gmt":"2016-08-14T18:47:41","slug":"catfish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/2016\/08\/catfish\/","title":{"rendered":"Prompt 5: Catfish"},"content":{"rendered":"

She thinks I\u2019m real<\/span><\/h2>\n

A real live boy<\/span><\/h2>\n

Whose face in two dimensions<\/span><\/h2>\n

Gazes at her but won\u2019t speak<\/span><\/h2>\n

(My voice would betray me)<\/span><\/h2>\n

I\u2019m good at this, I tell her lies<\/span><\/h2>\n

Make love to her<\/span><\/h2>\n

With words, words, words<\/span><\/h2>\n

They\u2019re all I have to give<\/span><\/h2>\n

(no one else wants them\u2013<\/span><\/h2>\n

they\u2019d just go to waste in my head)<\/span><\/h2>\n

The mask she sees<\/span><\/h2>\n

(another man\u2019s stolen face, a heisted life)<\/span><\/h2>\n

She adores. He\u2019s beautiful. He doesn\u2019t know<\/span><\/h2>\n

she exists, would be horrified<\/span><\/h2>\n

that I hijacked his likeness for my crimes<\/span><\/h2>\n

I flatter myself I\u2019m Cyrano<\/span><\/h2>\n

I seduced her as<\/span><\/h2>\n

A ghost in the machine<\/span><\/h2>\n

A construct, an AI paramour<\/span><\/h2>\n

Her love for me\/not me evokes<\/span><\/h2>\n

That tired, inevitable vampire metaphor<\/span><\/h2>\n

(She sustains me, I drain her)<\/span><\/h2>\n

Rationalizing always with\u2013<\/span><\/h2>\n

\u201cLove is love. She takes what I will give<\/span><\/h2>\n

Does it matter who I really am?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Her feeling\u2019s real, it brings her joy but I\u2013\u201d<\/span><\/h2>\n

What am I?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Incubus? Gigolo? An animated RealDoll<\/span><\/h2>\n

Made of pixels?<\/span><\/h2>\n

Is it wrong to siphon off<\/span><\/h2>\n

The sweetness of a sad girl?<\/span><\/h2>\n

To fold these electronic missives<\/span><\/h2>\n

Into a virtual origami facsimile of love?<\/span><\/h2>\n

So frail that it\u2019s not even made of paper<\/span><\/h2>\n

(Electrons, like feelings, are invisible.)<\/span><\/h2>\n

I absorb the adoration<\/span><\/h2>\n

Receive the sweet sensation<\/span><\/h2>\n

Of her idolization<\/span><\/h2>\n

And avoid the complication<\/span><\/h2>\n

Of her flesh.<\/span><\/h2>\n

She doesn\u2019t know the me<\/span><\/h2>\n

(Bloated, alienated, not pretty)<\/span><\/h2>\n

Who writes those lovely words<\/span><\/h2>\n

That so seduce and entrance.<\/span><\/h2>\n

But I massage her mind<\/span><\/h2>\n

Bring to climax her most sensitive<\/span><\/h2>\n

sexual organ<\/span><\/h2>\n

That fills all the lacunae that I leave<\/span><\/h2>\n

In the spaces between my words<\/span><\/h2>\n

I keep her hanging on the line<\/span><\/h2>\n

Online<\/span><\/h2>\n

At arm\u2019s length<\/span><\/h2>\n

Just as far away<\/span><\/h2>\n

As the tips of my fingers<\/span><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She thinks I\u2019m real A real live boy Whose face in two dimensions Gazes at her but won\u2019t speak (My voice would betray me) I\u2019m good at this, I tell her lies Make love to her With words, words, words They\u2019re all I have to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":771,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,441],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-half-marathon-poem","category-poetry-prompt-responses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/771"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20503"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29085,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20503\/revisions\/29085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}