A Poem by Bryan Murphy

In the Chair

 

Comfortable chair of suffering,

sculpted as if for the godlet Gazza

manifest in a Hong Kong bar

where the victim is seated open-mouthed,

anaesthetized with booze as he writhes,

till he disappears inside himself.

 

I too writhed, under the gas, barely ten,

dreamed of waking into the agony

of a dentist’s drill whining into my teeth;

then I did, and one was, and the spasm

proves Pavlov right these fifty years and more.

 

Now we are welcomed to the orthodontist’s

as old friends, our anxiety drained

by low-volume soap amid high-gloss magazines;

work plans are drawn up, each item on the estimate

set out with name and cost

and air of inevitability.

 

In the corridor, nurses come and go, dissecting Doctors Guglielmin and Sarafo.

 

And so it starts. The feeling is foul

as a probe into the gums

yields pus and blood as well as pain,

all in small quantities.

 

Infantilization rules as the hygienist talks

to the foreigner in childspeak,

while struggling to deal

with computer mapping of bleed-easy gums.

 

Next, the real McCoy.

Gentle Doctor Dentist delights in showing

slides of his good work down the years,

then settles into action,

trying to save the patient

the pain he needs

to pinpoint the rot.

 

Smoking Malay gum spirals from smouldering roots.

Before it assumes the shape of a genie,

it twists in on itself and disappears

as though into a black hole.

 

In toolboxes, colleagues nurture canal-filling gutta-percha.

 

I leave with an anaesthetic grimace, or smirk.

 

Hygienist again: the sound of her scraper

worse than the drill’s: more raw,

more like a personal attack.

I emerge as the city will from snow:

faded, jaded, presumably cleaner.

 

Next, a “Silent Way” language lesson

as dentist and assistant chatter

over my gagged mouth

before releasing me

into the everyday world outside it.

 

So many sessions that my winter walk

to that clinic and its counter-cultural search

for excellence melts into Spring.

 

It gets bizarre. At the hygienist’s,

a masked marauder arrives, injects painkiller,

announces a need for future pain;

dentist and assistant don

protective shades against disco lights

that turn amalgam hard.

 

A final chance for hurt: the dentist hacks

wayward cement from pulverized gums,

and then my greatest wish,

an end to pain outside my control,

comes true. 

Bryan Murphy divides his time among England, Italy, the wider world and cyberspace. He is the author of the e-books Postcards From Italy, Linehan’s Trip, Linehan Saves, Murder By Suicide,  Heresy, Breakaway and Goodbye, Padania. He welcomes visitors at: http://www.bryanmurphy.eu