Olorun

Not knowing what to do.

Not knowing who to see, today.

Yesterday it was the woman wielding dripping eyeliner wings like knives,

Tomorrow it’ll be the man draped in leopard skins, drinking liquid velour from a goblet the size of his head.

But someday, not today. Far into the future.

There will be a day when I no longer wash my hands with sandpaper.

Then and only then, will I sing my sawdust fire into the sky, in one last jaw-knocking roar,

And in reply God will pluck the whittled grain from between my fingers, and lay a cooling kiss twixt my eyes.

I’ll have shaped the knots and loops and whorls of my own quarter-cut maple body to exquisite perfection, a masterfully crafted fraction of the original, a relic for worship and idolatry.

But for today, my hands are still to be cleaned,

And there is only my grey boy to hear my crackling voice.