Siren of the internet, she stretches on a WordPress rock
that’s themed in Baskerville, the background black as night,
the fonts in sans and ornate serif, and all in white.
Revealed in quantized colours, she sits in scarlet heels
and greets me with a white-toothed smile that I know is meant to tease.
A blue skirt lies loose, with space for hands to slide above the knees.
She is the perfect mistress (except, alas, in one regard) –
always immaculate, always wanting, never replete,
and with breath in the morning that is always sweet.
Of all my subscribers, I rely on her the most
to respond with a Like to my uploaded post.
She whispers in the morning, when I’m half awake
to tell me all the pleasures that she’d like to take,
in French-accented verses that disregard the rules;
and dips in the waters with her virtual hand
to find my holothurian, still sleeping on the sand,
intent on pleasures in her saline tidal pool.
Perhaps she’s no child of Achelous, nor maybe even ‘she’
but a fat and flabby dugong, a man manatee –
who tricks the salt-burned eyes of old and weathered tars
who’ve sailed too long the online seas and found their way by stars.
Perhaps she is a man, complete with bobs and bits
who, when he’s home from work, slips on a dress and sits
before his screen to play the queen and cast his net on lonely gents,
whose married lives are empty, except for discontent.
Sing your songs of seduction, Siren, play me on your reel.
Flesh, with its imperfections, has no currency from afar.
I’ll buy instead the pictures and words to tell me who you are,
and pay the price by falling in love with a beautiful avatar.
| It was good to take a break from struggling over the final lines of some poems on my usual themes. This one, inspired by Coco’s blog – no longer online, sadlly- is meant to be kind and lighhearted, but was also a chance to continue my search for ways to employ rhyme without being enslaved by it. |
Steve Dowson 
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