And They Call it a Man's World...

Over the years I have listened to countless songs in the three languages I know. I’ve also read some poetry – some of them about nature, some about revolution but chiefly about love. Most of these love songs and poems describe, with soulful metaphors, similies and other such devices, the beauty of Woman in all her perfection. Descriptions abound over lotus shaped eyes, rose hued lips and shell shaped ears. And about the hair, the hands, the fingers, the waist, the feet, the gait… But seldom have I, if ever, come across a love song or poem that describes the male half of the human race in such flattering terms. I have listened to hundreds of tapes and cds and scoured thousands of music sites on the internet to find that elusive song or poem filled with metaphors and lovelorn expressions describing the male anatomy.

I wondered what a woman would pen if she decided to write a sentimental sonnet about her man. Would it go something like this?

Your alluring cheeks with greenish hue

The colour of mouldy moss

Abrasive as grey-black emery

To scratch my itching palm

Your hirsute ear so shapely

Like an old gramophone horn

The full-throated call of a happy toad

Is the melodic voice that is yours

That beery midriff, that well fed tum

Makes my heart flit hither and hither

Fluttering in the breeze of love.