When you left
I broke out in welted blemishes
like cancerous sagebrush
erupted polyps on desert flesh
itchy sprouts up my arm red
as white hot-tipped legs of housespiders

-I got a dry shave
three blade
unassigned option
and firewater
in my ears-

My teeth have become
untethered and boisterous,
sneaking out of my room
late at night for rowdy
unruly rendezvous and
drunken chattering rants.
They come home unrepentant
and disheveled, masking
their malfeasance with
sagebrush sprouts surreptitiously
crammed into unfilled cavities.

My tongue runs across that cancer
every morning - my flesh becomes
the desert flesh - the poisonous
parasite adheres my saliva, a fitting host.
The sagebrush rolls round gums
lonely desert dirt road
Providence's unnatural wood tick.

And I spit it out black
watch it tumble away
and spray malignant seed
of black alley asphalt
where the blacktop takes it in
nurturing piss and broken glass
and the city's night filth
spilled beer on worn heel steeltoes
rubbed in good like scraping
dogshit off dress shoe soles
and one contrived image of your face
it takes for the sage to erupt.
My turncoat teeth collect
and smuggle the flowering bud
back in
in a few hours.

I tried to name
your toxic cycle at first for
monkey-fool scenarios
of harness, bridle and bit
- vague attempts to isolate
multiplying cell and distill
the essence of its chlorophyllic
caustic propogative properties -
but furtively labeling the
acidic encompassing sensation
yielded only the futility
of hollow words.

I spent one full week wide awake
playing possum with my
unfortunate dentine attachés,
crudely attempting to hoodwink them
into some ill-timed misspoken murmur
or performing for my benefit their
grinding, clicking logarithmic communiqués
as indecipherable as U-boat enigmas;
a subtle method surprisingly related to me
by a maldeveloped and nearly rotted
sympathetic canine, exiled by the others for
some long-forgotten periodontal transgression.
This whole time I listened intently, but
observing nothing amiss and feeling my strength ebbing,
I concluded the incident to be a fading,
isolated event embellished and empowered
by my own curiosity, and finally retired
for a considerable yet torturous period.
I awoke to find the cycle started anew,
and a gaping, painful recess
stuffed with sagebrush blooms
the only remnant of evidence to my
lone and disconcerted loyalist tooth.