What hellish hurt hatches here.
Is that friend’s grin a fanged smile?
Is that saint, the poison landlord of the messy web?
Is that coworker a co-conspirator?
It is the most common thing on earth to pretend to be good when we aren’t.
There is a kind of crack that can open up between friends that leaks a treacherous toxicity into the sanctuaries of their souls.
And oozing through the self it trickles into the brain, drips through the jaw, sets the teeth on edge and poisons the tongue.
The henchmen are recruited, the meeting set up, and then follows the under-the-coat thrust, the old behind-the-back stab, the paper grave.
And so the world is again reminded, that deep within the soft coils of friendship may yet slither a fanged treachery, hissing in the soul, undulating through the mind and boring an oily and venomous tunnel into the heart.
To turn on the ones we once loved,
It’s a choice we each make, or not.
Modern Soliloquies & Pastiches 