The Dentist
Poetry
Any more anaesthesia’
I call out to my retired father,
repairing the crowns that sit astray on ignorant pebbles.
A botched nights desolation brings the old yin back into work.
‘Wisdom can’t be taught’ he says
in his blue bib and while peering at my teeth
through his multifocal spectacles
he examines the damage.
The unnatural survival to alcoholic rifles
that shot the white stallion’s legs.
He confesses with an unashamed conviction that
I am in no more need of lidocaine.
So pierced, my gums lay bare
seeping onto the tongue of unabashed pinkness.
The numbness grows fond of itself.
The pretty little narcotic narcissist of a tongue.
Shot up and swollen with relief.
The relief of no longer imprisoned and bedded
where stoned soldiers lay guard.
The tongue searches blindly.
Gathering taste now is indolent.
As my father operates on my cracked teeth,
every senseless stab shoots an unuttered pang of sadness
from my mind to the small of my back.
For the insentience is not eternal
because the tongues roughed up cousins rule
shall end and the sensitive one will dethrone him.
The barricades will come back to their senses and stand guard, erect and true.
But the mind drunkenly wanders, stumbles and suffers through.
When my father finishes the job he tells me I’m done and that he’ll see me soon.
With present content the door swings and the wind of worry
passes through the awakening arterials.
‘The anaesthesia will wear off’,
my father pats the small of my back
resisting pulling from the dampness gathered
as not to cause me embarrassment.
‘All over now’ he says encouragingly
and I concur.
I’ll have to start feeling again.
