Dispatches from the wilds of Poetania – Ladder

This poem is in no way inspired by Pablo Neruda’s “Your Feet“.

Your legs are not beautiful.
Well, no, perhaps I am being hasty.
Your legs may be elegantly sculpted
paradigms of the human form,
a fusion of abstract perfection and flesh reality,
wondrous to behold.
But they are not beautiful,
to me.

Your legs are an invasion.
Looming large each morning,
in my uncurtained window;
draped in loose practical pants,
spattered and stained;
as the scratching of your scraper
at the paint upon my lintel
shatters my silent dawn,
my early solitude,
my masturbating hour.