Reunion with Obàtálá
by Rosa Mundi

I came here to be
judged.  Nothing so godlike as
placing the small one on your
                punishing objects; the subjugation
                from divine pride provides
your black bird with a body, for a time.  It will dine upon
all my layers.

The stillness of solitary contentment
reformed into an unblessed garment,
             under which I have squatted
             as a sunless isolate, pawing clocks to shade
their faces; my kind, he engraved
             a face on time for identity
reminiscent of an innocent: purely
inhuman, my god.  We lie outside
            perfections, clocks outside
                                   ourselves, time
                                                    within itself only.
 
              I move like the crow
in the asymmetry of
              deformity; I bind myself to Saturn
          my talons
          linger in Him, in Her.  Eternity will slap
my stubbornness to bloodiness
yet never free me.  I long before
relinquished
the love of what
             is to be.
To be but one, to
cower.  To murder
     hope,
     but wonder.  The Moon is not
     my reflector, and its night has
                    exiled my shape
     as a spiritless horror; where could I sleep but
     in myself,
        the squalid crypt?

The obsidian wind whittled me
into sorrow’s minion, one deflected
                across decades
to supplicate before
you, a drunken god, as the joke of your mistake
              and the prey of your judgement, the misshapen fragment
              colliding against your
              decrepit
                        monument.