Funhouse Mirror

A poem about twisted reflections for National Poetry Month

Image: Allison Saeng via Unsplash+

For day ten of National Poetry Month,

V. Walker | Poet

tasked writers with writing a poem based on a single word. I chose “mirror.”

Here’s what I came up with…

---

It was like looking into a funhouse mirror. 
You tried too hard to emulate me clearer.
Stitching together pieces of my art. 
You had it all wrong from the start. 

You seem to think that making art is easy, 
That showing my soul doesn’t make me queasy. 
That a semblance of technique and pace, 
Can transport people to another place. 

I never said you could take what I made
and tear it apart, so now it is splayed
across your vast servers and many faces. 
One prompt, then it's off to the races. 

I see reflections of real art in that glass. 
Art, which was crafted, but now it can’t pass,
for anything other than a poor imitation, 
by a computer rising well above its station. 

To say nothing of the untold theft, 
And the looming potential death, 
of humanity’s greatest and oldest power, 
Needed more than ever in this final hour. 
 

It’s not that I don’t want others to have art.
But creativity should be human from the start. 
Born after an idea and inspiration collide, 
Not from something that has neither lived nor died. 

---

Thanks for Reading! Here’s Your Musical Pairing

Listen to this after reading, like pairing a glass of wine with dinner.