For One

Passport picture1999 when I first got locks

I fried dyed
Committed suicide
Laid you to the side
Cloning my dome,
After the ladies of Rome, I'm sorry,
Imitation is the sincerest form of harikari
I greased teased
But could not appease you,
Disguised you with weaves
Bordering on the brink
Between bone straight and curly kink,
Each time you had to juggle,
You rebelled, my wave
A symbol I think of strength and struggle,
Of ancestors too proud to live as slaves,
I termed you unruly, my beauty,
Tackled you, like Jacob at war with the Angel
Declared war against my natural tangle
Shackled you, in hair rollers and curling irons
Deployed anthrax spills of blonde and really red
To defeat my crown, you shifted
but would not be lifted
Ignoring my insistence upon inclusion
Amongst the living dead
You kept going back
Growing back, staying black
Defying that illusion,
And now I have reached the conclusion
That you are the true permanent
The God sent, the advertisement
That I love myself
Define myself
Allow myself to be
I place my hair on lock down
With my locked crown
I surrender do or die
Extract the cataract
From my third eye
And now I truly see
That without those chains of inferiority
I am truly F R E E!

Victori-04/01/99