Take Someone Off the Hook

Each day I try on a different self,
my mask is moulded from other days,
friends tell me it isn’t good for my health
some faces slip, some faces stay.

Sometimes I try on a lion’s head,
It’s usually a male with a flowing mane,
or I lift Sekhmet’s cropped insistence instead,
wear her power as I drive in the outside lane.

When it’s dark, I put the Mari Lwyd on,
snapping jaw bones white against the gloam,
bared teeth, throat singing an underground song,
death-shock dancing the long way home.

Beneath them all swirls and starlight void,
heads hang in the hall until they are deployed.