Root Canal

Apart from one brief anticipation of pain

I am wonderfully numbed, the only

discomfort in the sustained large O I am

made to make whilst the drool and drilled

detritus is immediately and cleanly vacuumed

away. All I can do is count the exams I’d

have to mark to match the dentist’s fee - and

going at a steady pace it’s about three days.

Blood on the papers, screaming between the

lines, journeys to the roots of memory: rewarding

their pain is a channel to pleasures, one that

marked in red is like finding the large X to

signal where I have discovered treasures, their

route to a dentist’s wage or teacher’s imagination.