bad mom with the sugar veins

bad teeth

bad genes

if it’s rotting in my head

of my own volition

then that’s one thing

but to be the one holding you down

knowing too well the choking feeling

of biting that damn X-ray thing

bringing you at seven in the morning

to breathe some gas in your nose

and have a molar plucked out 

years before it's time

well then it must be a 

shortcoming of a whole different sort

was I supposed to be able to 

protect you

either from the soft teeth 

passed down from the ancestors

or else from the soft brain

ever yielding to  the itchy sensation

of always-needing-more?