Teeth

Teeth

The severity of kindness is a myth

Use your teeth

But not to tear the hopeful heart from prostrate ribs,

I want to see the enamel before it bites me.

So, what bit you?

Before you turned to grace the stage, what

Made you turn,

To learn how

to discard the red cape - to

sharpen your fangs on the Hunter’s knife?

I thought it was me? No, surely not!

You went away; you passed the audition

While I waited nervous as a fox.

About to get snapped up in steel

I wanted to peel you

from my bones.

(Once, you wore my pelt around your neck – but only when

The weather suited

Now you disputed

The legitimacy of my skin; the quality; my worth.)

I raised my white flag but to a scientologist:

I didn’t belong

It all went so wrong.

Can I get your autograph, Hollywood movie star?

The ink won’t dry but I’ll try not to smudge it

Or is that how I fudged it?

All those years, should I just

have let it run?

See what lines formed on the page and

Joined you on stage?

I thought that only if you’d smile;

Would I relax the bile.

The severity of kindness is a myth

See my teeth.