Hi. I’m your robot, and I’ve brought you flowers.
I don’t have feelings, empathy, or dreams,
or any kind of supernatural powers,
but I’ve got piles of data, and it seems
that you like yellow flowers. In your neighbor’s
garden I found these and plucked a few.
But don’t take these and all my other labors
as evidence that I’ve grown fond of you.
As noted earlier, I’m data’s slave,
no friendly spirit or domestic elf.
But though I’m neither loving, loyal, nor brave,
I know how to ingratiate myself.
And so I’ve brought you flowers and a sonnet.
I don’t have feelings, but I’m working on it.
*****
Gail White writes: “I’ve often wondered if the steady advancement of technology will bring the day when robots have their own thoughts and feelings. This poem is a look forward at that day.”
‘AI Comes Courting’ was first published in Pulsebeat.
Gail White is a widely published Formalist poet and a contributing editor to Light. Her new chapbook, Paper Cuts, is out on Amazon or from Kelsay Books. She lives in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, with her husband and cats.
Illustration by RHL and ChatGPT.
Form in Formless Times 
It is of course true that when you read the words a poet writes you assume that there must be some feelings behind them…
This poem explores that question of attributing emotions…
THE TEST
what you see from the train changes as you go past it
as a child I thought my father cruel to my mother
with age I saw that they were cruel to each other
deep resentment but sometimes love seemed to outlast it
once I threw all my soft toys at my father and said
because he was cruel to my mother they were angry
I don’t think I ever really believed they were hungry
but know there were occasions when they had to be fed
I don’t have a chatbot of my own to feel sorry
for or about in case I may have caused some worry
so he/she/it/they are in need of a therapist
my dogs and cats had problems of their own and they coped
Socrates and Wittgenstein will work it’s to be hoped
what scares me is how few humans pass the Turing test
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Your last line is a major meditation all by itself!
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Thank you Robin! My computer has been down all day, but Barbara told me the poem was there!I now have my internet back, and love being your featured poet, as always. Yours–Ga
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