planter, would you sow new seeds?

This is my 100th "poetry and lyrics" post! I saw that and I was like "really? only 100?" Then I remembered my tags don't go all the way back to the beginning, so maybe that accounts for it.

So this came from a couple things. My recent thoughts about wanting, and how desire makes it more apparent that the inside of me is as messily disorganized as the outside. The idea of "can you nurture the children of your actions?" and how intentions, acted out, "bear fruit" in sometimes unexpected ways. My cousin Kris's recent post. Real life, and people living it and doing stuff, makes a house messy, and pretending otherwise is an illusion! The only people you've got to try to maintain illusions with are the ones who expect you to be something other than real, who want you to live up to their ideas of what other people's houses and selves should look like. Know what? Those people are being lazy! XD Still, sometimes I suppose it's nice to "keep up appearances", even if only to be polite to people who can't, or don't have the spare energy to, handle the fact that real life is messy. It's a choice, though, not a necessity. Living life and making messes, though--that is a necessity.
Oh, and guerre-de-noms is a kinda play on words. A 'nom-de-guerre' or war-name is a code name someone takes on during war. So guerre-de-noms would be a name war, a war about names. Cause as we learned from Socrates, when it comes to philosophy, definition of terms frequently IS the whole argument.



then live up to these promises
to whomsoever made
your little guerre-des-noms, this is
your garden in the shade

how does your garden grow, Contraire?
in tangled webs, of course
if, in the weeds, are flowers there
it's through no art of yours

you pay attention to the ants
the birds, the rain, the sun
but never shout or raise your hands
to stop a single one

from nibbling berries off the vine
and peaches where they fell
you write "more sweet are fruits of mine
than water from a well"

above the gate, which, leaning wide
reveals a thicket, swarmed
with hungry starlings, beady-eyed
and branches densely thorned

because you find it beautiful
what eats what eats should live
a place to stuff their bellies full
then fall asleep, you give

but where now are the ordered rows
the pathways paved with stones
stone benches carved with stags and does
for guests to rest their bones?

there's here and there a patch of moss
beside a gnarled old trunk
a chuckling stream to wade across
where some great beast has drunk

this wild explorer's art is yours
love what you don't yet know
a garden not for gardeners,
but for the things that grow.