Toothache

My tooth, as if I had just one, this one that hurts,
speaks to me, as do all addictions: Come to me, stay away,
return! it says; and I, a fervent listener, obey.

Closing my eyes to ease the pain, to study it and get inside,
I see it risen like a tomb or monument
without inscription, heavy on its mound,
backlit by steely bulbs
throwing shadows as from angry searchlights.

Soft-maker of my food,
masher, grain-grinder, jewel of my jaw
on fire now and I am melting –

your heart is one electric nerve
and you have lost your crown; your pain is eloquence,

though of one word only; I sit inside you,
you are all I am, my enameled brain
with its solo thought: here, here, here
that stabs and throbs –

pain, our most private possession,
making seconds into years.

What if all the air were nitrous oxide?
Each day we’d fall in love with nurses, every one
with Ethiopian or Irish lilts, and stardust
sparkling through their mascara.

Who knew God was a bald, ham-fingered tooth-farmer
with nose hairs thick as trees?

Mean molar, when you’re pulled,
I’ll bury you in a jar of gobstoppers
and they will eat you always.


*

Ah, Poetry Month! I have let you down. Too many essays to grade and students to console & shepherd through the spring semester, so I'll be fortunate to write one or two poems this season, in sad contrast to my 30 or so efforts of last year -- mediocre, mostly, but bravely posted, day by day through April.

It's already the Ides of Poetry Month, 2011, but here we go -- "Toothache," inspired by my chipped molar, now behaving nicely, thank you, through serious conversation between us, and so I will continue to evade the horrors of dentistry, as I have assiduously for many years. Why? Not from fear of the drill, but rather as an extension of my claustrophobia: being caught in that chair, unable to move for half an hour or more! Horrible, horrible. I have been known to shriek from panic when bound in dentist's chairs, so I try to eat well (I abhor sweets, in any case -- tarts -- little hussies!), I have a rotating, vibrating toothbrush, and I am a wizard with my Waterpik.

As for other inspirations, points of craft, etc: as always with me, an exercise in reiterations, echoes, nonce rhymes, fugal rhythms and all-around rhetorical self-consciousness. Also, hyperbolic, ecstatic address, peripheral faux-philosophical nods, and one or two beautiful women. (Once, when I had to endure the horror of an MRI exam -- I went in unaware of what tortures they intended to inflict on me -- it was the steady IV of Lithium, the panic bulb, and most of all, the attending Irish nurse that got me through the ordeal, So, I have paired her with an Ethiopian colleague near the end of the poem).

Poems can be meditations, addresses, invocations, exorcisms, curses (the Irish tradition holds the best examples of the latter), prayers, memorials -- I read Erasmus' De Copia and Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria Nova, Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, etc., for inspiration, even if it is misprisioned. Maybe I pull too far away from the plain style, but at least I'm having fun.