God is Afro African 

What a lifetime you’ve lived in need of oil, to glow brilliant as a healthy black strand.

black as I am, there is a probability I’d run out of melanin that lubes this body to a swallow.

once, a friend mentioned stain, & I stand up to the blemish.

we riot in the angst—to the pulling of hair,

in same way we oil back, slippery as empathy.

a comb too, is a mediator in practice plastic, 

the way it runs its hand on the scalp of a conflict to have us bald with calmness.

one strand of me is a mohawk, spiky-out for a fight.

my self-defense of porcupine gesture.

your insistence on calling it Afro African, a way to beg the terror afresh.

I go head-first into a mall & the style announces me in a standstill.

the black girl on the counter, peeping at her skin as if a reward.

I once got a hair wash that foams so well into my own rage,

I had to water it down with oil.

wisdom is the first form of lubricant:

as if I parable the five virgins in the Bible for their lack of ointment.

the delay catches like fire on God’s hair—

a shaving of bleak light, before the cry of lamp burns out to a stranded wick.

something pontifies on the altar of me, wanting to teach a history of clean cuts:

God is Afro African worn in style.

a small delay on the side, coming full on you as if a bridegroom.

I, a wise bride, virgin at hair.

you, at the mercy of oil & its hot finishing.

you will kneel a begging & I won’t dim my lamp for you.

oil is what holds us to his calling. 

I preach the petroleum everywhere, when I want to be petty.

hold your lamp, while I play messiah.

see, your liquid drying the substance of its life,

blackened up to its globe even before the watchnight is done.

we religion in oil, black boy vigilantes.

I shone a torch on these letters & they glow eye-bright in their wake,

guarding each neighboring word stalked by a white space. 

in the end, we undo each other: black words, scrawled across white space.

delete the white space & meaning is overwrought.

delete the black word & emptiness stares you white in the face, like a godless bride.