hatred of tame.

The hated lawn, ornamental
shrubbery and other plants
so loathsome and pitiable
as to need human tending: how

can you live in such state?

Plant life is glorious, verdant
and fecund, impressively wild
in wastelands and desert places
I love to visit. Not these stunted
things. Disgusting, unless and except
the excuse is food - then, sure! Kept 
as a pet, good for something. Tomato

vines, cucumber vines, glorious
and secret roots and tubers - I can 
dig it, and have. We coax these things, 
cajole them and what we get out of it
is delicious and proud. 

Not these stunted things. Propped
fixed in place, subject to innumerable
mass decapitations and savage prunings,
lopped from top, front and sides
in unpredictably delayed
and procrastinated series  
by a furious maniac - the price

they endure for life.
For their questionable
privilege of domesticity.

It's the most debased and perverted 
affront to humanity and nature I can think of,
we that we should be their slaves, they 
that their mastery of us should include 
such abject mutilation and order 
imposed by caretakers. Me, I only
participate in my periodic maimings
and beheadings as an excuse 

to give full vent
to hatred of anything
so weak and useless
as to sit there 
and take it,

without even the excuse 
of giving something in return. 

Secretly, I pause for breath
glorying in the sweat
of my bodily exertions, 
and wink at the half-decapitated 
hedge, a grudging and tentative
affection in confidence. Some bond.
Perhaps, forged through ordeals. "You guys,"

I confide. "Are stronger than me. 
This doesn't even bother you, does it? 
It's probably refreshing, like a haircut 
all the way to the neck. It doesn't 

even bother you" 

does it