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Posted on January 27, 2023 by Michael Aaron Mason

Michael Aaron Mason

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Don’t bother convincing me  
of the thinness of your courage. 

I’ve seen your dedication  
to appearing grim and unapproachable.
You say you need someone’s help 

like you need a hole in the head. 
But did you ever ask your home healthcare
physician for prehistoric treatments  
for Lord-knows-whatever would require  
bloodletting, or a tobacco-smoke enema, 

or sleeping next to a skull  
like a profaned nightlight?

You should know that one 
was prescribed to treat teeth-grinding—
blokes with sore gums night-haunted

by their Babylonian ancestors 
aiming to finger a way back  
from the abyss, into the juddering  
mouths of their somnolent progeny,
kilometers down the genetic tract.

They needed head-holes, and they got them:
palm-sized craters knocked from their domes 

with stone cotters so their brains 
could suck airtight to the edges,  
exposed to the sun, 

to the captious breath of God.
Imitatio Dei, Verzeihung Lieber Gott,
Have some goddamned mercy please
before the brain-drain kicks in.

I imagine a tidy hollow 
at the foot of the Andes, 

piled high with these discarded
circles of bone—skulled  
roundlets, lying in the dirt 

like sand dollars dried  
to a biscuity crisp. 
Could you collect them? 

Or flip them like coins?
Which side would be tails?

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