Shifting under my skin,
seeping into my gums,
a sensation of emence pressure,
and awareness to unbear.

Slouching with a blue bib chain,
hung around the neck,
and heavy floride notes
tickling my tounge.

Goggles sliding along my face,
Sweat rolling down wet strands of hair.
Pulling away like velcro strips,
the sound of eagerness
and hot summer swelter.

That office chair makes me shake with anticipation,
Spotlight in yellow hues,
beaming down upon me.
Staring off until team appears
and the numbness fades in.

Time for another change.

For inconvienient, expensive exposure
with a little bit of me set to be disposed.

Birds always fly south
When, a winner has a moment...
Sour old fall, of life into bed with a crowd
Of feelings; never a spoil or relent?

Acceptation and divorce, artily
A shrewd person knows more than a cup of tea?
Lights and party's, fights and smarty...
When a dalliance has the floor, a candor can be...

Hair is a smile, if first and foremost denial?
Simply airs, and the deified soul to prove...
A habit in the gray, hosts of decency known a while
You are the hero, I am the pact and the silence of love...

A wager in the shadow of a waterfall?
Since rainbows are so expensive, or a mutual cause...
Where is a life more naked, with terror or mercy for a salt?
The price of love has become even more, a sit with laws...

Knowing what I do, a reason has a voice to win every argument
Spill of light, or cover of darkness...
The tooth you share, is a peace with a realm to its redoubt, patience?
Has the time to remember me; when shame has become a seen,  bless...

Sleep or sunshine, the dream is the same...
Sport of since, and the charity of a simpler sake
My moment in the borrowing of still, has come and gone with fame
Of a new time, in the shared forces of wishes, we've come to hate or make?

I said goodbye to my baby tooth; it went away
with all my youth. Goodbye—bye, bye, bye.
In my mouth for too many years, and now it all
tastes like tears. Goodbye—bye, bye, bye.

You know were gone to soon, and you've always
been my favourite tooth. And then you went to
steal my youth. Oh my—my, my, my. Goodbye—bye,
bye, bye.

You've inspired,—despite. Despised,—you were mine.
At your prime,—inside. Outside,—you were mine.
Goodbye—bye, bye, bye.

And I could never get you out my mind; even if I
pulled and tired. Oh my—my, my, my. Goodbye—bye,
bye, bye.

Goodbye—bye, bye, bye.

Later I am going to extract a tooth on camera to show mind over matter. I am a dentist, although it has taken two months of work to pull one tooth. It is an art. A rotten and infected art

So this is what pain feels like:
A rotting in the center of your tooth.
You don’t want to touch it (that’s where the real pain starts),
So you leave it.
And a dull ache becomes a sharp one;
Decay on the inside becomes decay on the outside.

And then your tooth is black.

It hurts more than you’ve ever felt
When the dentist takes his drill to your tooth.
It somehow hurts even worse
When he tells you that he can’t salvage it.
        You can’t turn decay into strength, he says.
        You can’t bring death back to life, he says.

Now, there’s an empty space where a tooth once was.
You run your tongue over it, mindlessly, daily—
In a few weeks, the raw flesh becomes toughened, smooth—
It’s like nothing was ever there.
No tooth. No decay. No death.
But you still remember.

You still feel the ache.

Polish
by Michael R. Burch

Your fingers end in talons—
the ones you trim to hide
the predator inside.

Ten thousand creatures sacrificed;
but really, what’s the loss?
Apply a splash of gloss.

You picked the perfect color
to mirror nature’s law:
red, like tooth and claw.

I thought about titling or subtitling this one “A mini-ode to manicure” but thought better of it. Please note that this poem is not about female predators but the way the human race “glosses over” its predatory nature. We may appear to be “civilized” but what are we doing to the planet and its other inhabitants? Keywords/Tags: polish, nails, talons, claws, predator, gloss, loss, red, tooth, claw, pollution, climate change, global warming, mass extinction, genocide

i had a necrotic tooth
inside my mouth
i tasted death

I know a lady dentist
Whose touch is not as sweet as her smile
She seems really nice
But not with those tools in her hand

It will take just a minute she says
But the pain that follows lasts for days
The whirr of the drill
Sends me down the proverbial hill

The shades of whites and blues
Puts the frenzy on cue
Not even her soothing words
Can make the pain less worse

Whenever I have to eat a candy or sweet
I stop to consider which is meet
The pains I can hardly bear
Or the lady dentist's smile so dear