Oh, I Wish I’d Looked After Me Teeth

Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth,
And spotted the dangers beneath,
All the toffees I chewed,
And the sweet sticky food,
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

I wish I’d been that much more willin’
When I had more tooth there than fillin’
To give up gobstoppers,
From respect to me choppers
And to buy something else with me shillin’.

When I think of the lollies I licked,
And the liquorice allsorts I picked,
The sherbet dabs, big and little,
All that hard peanut brittle,
My conscience gets horribly pricked.

My Mother, she told me no end,
“If you’ve got a tooth, you’ve got a friend”
I was young then, and careless,
My toothbrush was hairless,
I never had much time to spend.

Oh I showed them the toothpaste all right,
I flashed it about late at night,
But up-and-down brushin’
And pokin’ and fussin’
Well, it didn’t seem worth the time… I could bite!

If I’d known I was paving the way,
To cavities, caps and decay,
To the murder of fillin’s
Injections and drillin’s
I’d have thrown all me sherbet away.

So I lie in the old dentist’s chair,
And I gaze up his nose in despair,
And his drill it do whine,
In these molars of mine,
“Two amalgam,” he’ll say, “for in there.”

Oh how I laughed at my Mother’s false teeth,
As they foamed in the waters beneath,
But now comes the reckonin’
It’s me they are beckonin’
Oh, I wish I’d looked after me teeth.

'I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth' read by the author from Pam Ayres Poetry Collection (BBC Audiobooks, 1997), original text copyright Pam Ayres 1992, from The Works: Selected Poems (BBC Books, 2008), used by permission of the author

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