Wisdom Extraction -- Mind Along With Teeth

So one day I am sitting around and
One of my friends says
Jim your breath is fucking foul
What the fuck have you been eating
You sorry bastard
And I tell him "dude you know
we get lunch at the same place
Why am I not bitching about your breath."

Discussion followed discussion and much of that
With this person shielding their nose from my breath
And eventually it was resolved that my final molars
Just had to come out. This was not something
One would anticipate with glee, this is
Major surgery. Look, any time a medico must
Stick a chisel in your mouth and beat on it with
A hammer, lots of times, this isn't like
Getting a splinter pulled out nor even like an early
Abortion. No, this is serious shit.

So, into the hospital I go. Before the procedure
I am standing around smoking a cigarette
And this was back in the days when even doctors smoked
And perhaps they mistook me for a med student or
Perhaps they were fucking with me. I can't say but
All I can tell you is that well-educated people -- hey we're talking
Actual medical doctors, okay? -- were referring to a human
Life on their table scheduled at some specific hour
As their "Mercedes payment". To this is humanity reduced:
We can keep talented sociopaths on track only with Mercedes.

My head, my head. After the doctor says count backwards and
The lines of the acoustic tiles in the ceiling twist and warp and fade
And depart into a place where once only dreams were seen
The sounds remain. I'm not much of a man for smells and
In any case there's not much to smell in a hospital
Other than hospital. Yet the banging isn't easily ignored
Especially when every whack of the hammer on chisel
Rock my head back, rocks my skull past the limits
Of where a head can go and still be attached to a neck
Internally decapitated whack whack whack still I listen

Dead as a hanged man
Dead as anything can be that still has a heartbeat
Why do I survive as the anesthesiologist turns up the gas
Why do I survive as I hear my final molars break free
Only after my head leaves my neck
Why are my struggles -- believe me I am fighting --
Unanswered at my muscles though my mind fights as if
G_d himself stiffened my limbs to be weapons of righteousness?
As the friendly doctor reaches above my head to push on
The syringe in the cart full of lethal injection, Why do I yet live?

And watch?

It's not as if I am some astral being
Floating above the operating room
Trying to decide
To follow
The
White
Light which some say beckons
I don't see that at all
All I see is my head bent back
With a chisel in my mouth
With a hammer going
Bang bang bang
Isn't the tooth out yet
Isn't he dead yet
Turn up the gas turn up the drip
Isn't he dead yet
Fuck look here doctor you put
Too much of that shit into him and
It's clear malpractice.

Bang bang bang well this isn't clear malpractice
Says the dentist even as the anesthesiologist mutters
I can't handle this much pain without killing him
Fuck it says the doctor Back Off I am not losing
My Mercedes payment.

Ow ow OOWW OW! cut the nerve
Says the anesthesiologist
Done! says the surgeon and pain vanishes
But sensation of location continues as a tooth
One two three four teeth vanish from internal radar
Boom bang bang bang whack
Bang with the hammer but it's not half as bad as
Crunch with the pliers as the vise-grip
Locks hard onto the last of the wisdom teeth and
Schchlrssch goes the last final molar.

Crunch goes the tooth and I cannot move
"Internal decapitation, did you say, doctor?"
What am I, Aemon Goethe after his third botched hanging
And what the fuck did I do to deserve this?
The eternal endless question of all of Goethe's victims
Bend the head back and pound out the final molars

Ooopsies! tsk tsk internal decapitation
Fuck it, I don't know why he's alive
But I'm getting my Mercedes payment
Or my cousin will sue
Fuck do you mean he'll be walking the streets
With a fucking broken neck?
Fuck him. Let a lesson be learned
Let a lesson be taught
What exactly should I have learned here?

A few years after I staggered out of
Wisdom Tooth Extraction Surgery
-- All four at once, and why the hell not --
A friend of mine informed me that
They were going to hospital for
The same procedure. They almost
Cried as they said: If I come out of hospital
The same way that you did...
Please please don't hesitate fo
Just fucking kill me. They said

"I couldn't live like that."

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