The Last Days of My Teeth

by
Tom Hamilton


A Better Place

You know people die as we're spying the funnies.
As we laugh at sitcoms, a truck rolls over.
The jaws of life bite, as we jaw and smoke pipes.
We can't change the expired heart like a tire,
and just drive on.

Why don't you stare without blinking Jesus?
If you severed the lambs femoral of our -deer- ones.
Aren't you God enough to meet pointing faces?
or will you but send some pumped human lackey,
to say something as fake as a clown like:
"They're in A Better Place."

Yeah
A Better Place- that's a riot.
Go ahead try it, jump from a tower.
Splatter your brains like the Mister Gotti's buffet.
You'll just get scraped away by a mongrel scooper,
and after everybody cries into a dry stupor,
they'll leave you in that BETTER PLACE-
where ants, mice and termites move into your face
like it was The Holiday Inn.

and then

Somewhere in the frequency distance,
an antenna turns and turns again,
trying to get the far sky cartoons
to come in.


Budget Press