Drum

Drum

I lie in the dentist’s chair, mouth numb,

teeth glum at the fact of being there. 

Out on the street, there’s a drum beat:

student protesters - one chewing gum -

shouting some slogan; in the midst of the scrum

the chewing gum student looks dumb;

dumb, keeping mum, he wants to know

why he’s driven along by the throng, and

slumbering inside his head, the slogan song

stunning the air that he breathes, choking his

conscience: there isn’t a crumb in this function for

one such as he; he’d sooner be slumming at home,

strumming his new-strung guitar, leaving the

politicos, activists, radicals thrumming

the sum of their discontents, discharging their

duties as soon-to-be-citizens, getting it out of their

systems before they succumb to the same old

reactionary plums offered new chums by the 

Old Boys clubs.  Whatever may come thinks the

chewing gum boy, being less than the sum of his parts.