This is going to hurt just a little bit...

A trip to the dentist is a harrowing experience for the average petrified soul. However thanks to this poem a lot of people are shit scared of the dentist's chair. Just to clear things, let me tell from my own experience that there is nothing life-altering about visiting the dentist and getting your teeth in prime condition. Stoopid Ogden Nash! His poem should be taken out of the school curriculum. It's about time! This dramatic poem (perhaps intended to be funny) creates an excruciatingly painful impression on the reader. Jeez!

One thing I like less than most things is sitting in a
dentist chair with my mouth wide open.
(A dentist chair is one of the most comfy things to sit on you jerk!)

And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopen.
(You are neither invincible dude, nor resistant to decay!)

Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,
(Like reading your poem)

But the one that is both is dental.
(For the sake of rhyme!)

It is hard to be self possessed
(Especially for you)

With your jaw digging into your chest,
(Hardly the truth)

So hard to retain calm
(Freaky bundle of nerves you!)

When your fingernails are making serious alterations in your life
line or love line or some other important line in your palm,
(PHHHH!)

So hard to give your ususal cheerful effect of benignity
(I doubt cheerful is the word to be associated with you)

When you know your position is one of the two or
three in life most lacking in dignity
(You crazy lunatic)

And your mouth is like a section of road that is being worked on
(Hope a road roller goes into your mouth) 

And it is cluttered up with stone crushers and concrete mixers and drills and steam rollers and there isn't a nerve on your head that aren't being irked on.
(Relax fella!)

Oh some people are unfortunate to be worked on by thumbs,
(Are you talking about accupressure?)

And others have things done to their gums,
(Again, for the sake of rhyme)

And your teeth are supposed to being polished
(What's wrong with that?)

But you have reason to believe they are being demolished.
(Drama queen)

And the circumstances that adds to your terror
(Hmmm...)

Is that it's all done with a mirror,
(How else then, Einstein!)

Because the dentist may be a bear, or as the Romans used to say,
only they were referring to a feminine bear when they said it, an ursa,
(What have the Romans got to do with it?)

But all the same how can you be sure when he takes his crowbar in one hand and mirror in the other he won't get mixed up, the way you do when try to tie a bow tie with the aid of a mirror, and forget that left is right and vice versa
(They have had practice!) 

And then at last he says, That will be all, but it isn't because
he then coats your mouth from cellar to roof
(Rolling eyes)

With something I suspect is generally used to put shine a horse's hoof,
(Am sure a dentist would be furious by now)

And you totter to your feet and think,
Well it's over now and after all it was only this once,
(Sometimes it is)

And he says come back in three months.
(Don't come if it bugs you so much!)

And this O Fate, is I think the most vicious that thou ever sentest,
(Again, drama queen)

That Man has to go continually to the dentist to keep his teeth in good condition
(You want to go to a dermatologist instead?)

When the chief reason he wants his teeth to be in good
condition is so that he won't have to go the dentist
(Get over it, you creep!)