Nitrous oxide: about as close

as it gets          to the gods

without sacrifice, the nonsense of origins

a pretty polly epiphany

polyphony cackling through

the wireless speakers of the mind.
It’s a shame they don’t serve religion at the dentist anymore.

It damages the brain, the wowsers say, and it’s true

that religion should be consumed in moderation,

but what’s a few cells culled from the mortal billions

while they drill.
My last dentist wore loud shirts

and installed bad crowns in mouths.

His talk of motor yachts as he drilled

and filled was a poor craftsman’s

desperate superiority, the man was all enamel,

an anger coated in achievement, my mouth

was his McMansion, his shirt an admission

of life being elsewhere. Probably Hawaii.
My new dentist takes 3d images of my jaw.

There are coloured regions like a rain chart

where the teeth press together:

mountain ranges chowing down

on the unevenness of things,

clenching the inequality of dreams.
Megabytes ride the ether,

a small mill the size of a budget printer

in the next room carves the crown.

We watch it together wearing our smiles.

Who needs gods when you can do this?

He fits it, bakes it, glues it in.  So many

almost miracles, so many leaps of reason

to tantalise the understanding.

His assistant gives me the bill.
God is historical and I am on my way to join him

This dentist is younger than me

and in better touch with the future.

He looks like a movie star and I’m already looking back,

to the old days, when we self-administered religion.

We were stupid then, beginnings seemed endless,

the gods were mostly with us, we found them

when we drove to Maccas and sucked

the nitrous out of ten whipped cream bulbs

in the carpark, then tried to order burgers

from the smiling girls inside

without dissolving into laughter.