It’s been an age old fear
that’s kept me stranger to the dentist’s care
the years of trauma
kept me cooler not warmer
to the visits and his nightmare
soft reclining
chair

now being older
more circumspect perhaps
yet give myself over
lie back at will
to the rover with the whining drill
erect and eager
to hack away more degenerated
gaps

it’s a bitter pill
that neglect now heckles
from the dark
not grinning pearls but bearing
endless jabbing in the pallet
and the floor
of the heart
cuts and stitches in the silky gum
lying there horizontally
tense
not altogether numb

might I be radiated by the x rays dot
precisely aimed through skull to jaw
till all is shot kapot
and nothing grows?
while the quick seeps liverish
my body’s barometer slumps south
my hair forming silver cracks along
the darker blues and blacks
of clothes

and all these harsh invasions
in the miniature dimensions
of my gaping
helpless
tender
silent
screaming

mouth