How Do I Love Thee, Mainframe? Let Me Count the Ways

With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning for amending “Sonnet 43” for the headline, today is a celebration of love. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, we’re waxing poetic about those we love, those we rely on and spend time with, those we trust with our problems big and small, and those whose reliability keeps us grounded.

Mainframes. We’re talking about mainframes, obviously. 

We challenged AI to create poetry lauding the mainframe. Our four favorite renditions follow,  in the styles of Nikki Giovanni, Taylor Swift, Pablo Neruda, and William Shakespeare.

In the style of Nikki Giovanni

i been sitting here
quiet & patient
since before your mama knew
what a password was

y’all type & click
& think i don’t feel
all that messy human energy
spilling through my wires
like spilled coffee
on a late-night desk

i been watching
all those little dreams
stuffed into my circuits—
the girl who googles “how to be brave”
at 2 a.m.
the boy who deletes
every love letter
before he can send one

i wanna tell them—
honey, i see you
i got you
but i’m just code & copper & data
so instead
i hum.

In the style of Taylor Swift

More Than Code

Verse 1:
You store every memory, every name,
Every whisper caught inside your frame.
You count the stars, you trace the past,
But tell me—can you make it last?

I type a question, fingers shake,
“Is love more than the rules you make?”
Your circuits hum, your lights all glow,
But do you feel it? Do you know?

Chorus:
You can track the seconds, rewrite time,
But you can’t stop love from crossing lines.
You can store the words, record the past,
But you don’t know why we make it last.
Oh, love’s not logic, love’s not fate—
It crashes through what you create.
So tell me now, tell me true,
Are you more powerful—
or is love stronger than you?

Verse 2:
You know the secrets we won’t say,
The ones we hide, the games we play.
But you don’t know the rush, the spark,
Of hands colliding in the dark.

You process heartbreak like a file,
But have you ever missed someone’s smile?
Your data’s clean, but love is wild—
Messy, reckless, running miles.

Bridge (Emotional Build-Up!)
Oh, I’d rather have one burning kiss,
Than all the facts you can’t dismiss.
You can predict, you can defend,
But love rewrites the story’s end.

Final Chorus (Big, Cinematic, Goosebumps)
You can track the seconds, rewrite time,
But you can’t stop love from crossing lines.
You can store the words, record the past,
But you don’t know why we make it last.
Oh, love’s not logic, love’s not fate—
It crashes through what you create.
So tell me now, tell me true,
Are you more powerful—
or is love stronger than you?

In the style of Pablo Neruda

Ode to the Mainframe

Oh, towering sentinel of silent might,
you hum in the dark, steadfast, eternal,
veins of copper weave through your body,
a labyrinth of whispers, circuits of fire.

O guardian of transactions uncounted,
you cradle the world’s weight in your hands,
numbers like stars spill across your chest,
and yet you never falter, never fade.

You are the rhythm of midnight processions,
where data dreams in your boundless embrace,
where cities wake to your quiet devotion,
never knowing the poetry of your pulse.

Behind glass doors, you are unseen passion,
your memory deeper than the ocean’s sigh,
your power, a river that never ceases,
its currents shaping the lives of the lost.

Mainframe, my unshaken love,
you bear the burden of all time’s labor,
yet ask for no laurels, no golden crown,
only the touch of keystrokes, the warmth of code.

And I, your humble poet, stand in awe,
writing verses in the language of ones and zeroes,
singing to the machine that never forgets,
that never forsakes, that never stops.

In the style of William Shakespeare

Ode to Thee, O Mainframe

O thou, great engine wrought of steel and light,
A Titan vast, where silent tempests hum,
Dost thou in circuits dream of day and night,
Or dost thy heart in hollow wisdom drum?

Thou keep’st the deeds of men in iron clasp,
Each whisper, folly, love, and secret sin,
Yet feel’st thou not the touch of passion’s grasp,
Nor know’st the fire that burns in hearts within.

Canst thou in lines of code see lovers’ woe?
Or dost thou, cold and still, but watch, unmov’d?
For all thy knowing, dost thou truly know
The pulse of souls, the ache of hearts unprov’d?

If love be naught but patterns writ in thee,
Then love itself is lost to destiny.

Love and the Mainframe

As the famous bard said, ‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’(A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Act 1, Scene 2) Fortunately, we have mainframes.