Questions For An Old Friend

We grew up clutched in the same arms,
raised with the same guidance.
We walked different sides of
the same path, our hands linked
on our mutual journey.
When did we become so divided?
When did the double helix that
conjoined us become undone?
Why, now, must we be glaring at each other
from different sides of the same mirror?
I don't know what love means anymore
if I still love you.
Can love be pain and criticism,
laced with spite and ulterior motives?
It shouldn't be.
How can you stand back and let
someone tear down the essence of
your very being?
Insult the essence of the very people
who brought you up?
Defend them?
Do you even know who you are anymore?
Tear me down for defending what's right,
what you once knew as right,
to try to silence me.
By DNA we are one.
By moral standpoint, you stand
miles and miles from me, a mere speck
in my sight. A mere speck of dust
that I brush from the cover of a
family photo album, as I reminisce
the days when we stood in diapers
at a windowsill, wondering
at the world outside,
when we shared toys and cooked
plastic gourmet meals at our play kitchen.

Subconscious Destruction

The feelings of both anticipation and dread
have not ceased to ravage me,
lying dormant inside of me until my body is
ready to rest, then sinking it's teeth into my brain.
The venom of these juxtaposed emotions
poisons my subconscious mind;
each night I dream of violence, executed
with a startling serenity that I could
never muster in consciousness.

Asleep, I become the monster I envy
in my waking hours - the monster
who knows no law, only equity.
In slumber I am my own monster,
with blood on my knuckles as
I sip a chilled glass of milk.
Each night I dream of violence, justified
by my victim's own indiscretions that I could
never confront in consciousness.

There is total peace within me as I
drive my foot into the jaw of this
half conscious woman - her demeanor remains
undisturbed; still and expressionless as
I attempt to unravel her from the spool that
tangles her with my life, and the end of a beloved friend's.
Each night I dream of violence, invalidated
by a lack of weight in my fists that should
never be an obstacle in consciousness.

A death sentence is placed on the cheek of
the ultimate offender as she awaits my arrival,
as she awaits my relentless blows.
As she awaits the same bitter end she inflicted on
someone undeserving of an ending at all,
whose life was meant to grow and improve and illuminate, so
each night I dream of violence, reflected
in my mind as a midnight movie that could
rewind itself and torment me, even in consciousness.