the contemplations of a torturer

Why does this bloodied sweetheart smile at me?
Smile with that special smile my father had?
I will not - cannot - look at him from this time on...
The patient will not speak, the surgeon cannot look!

Somehow I have to open up this gentleman...
Open up? A slip most Freudian! I'm back
at my first op', the need to steel myself. I'll do
the same again, I have a duty to perform.

I have to make him talk, tell all he knows.
He and his kind contaminate the earth.
I have my orders from the very top. From those
who know what pestilence these people spread.

I made a promise once to do no harm. What did that mean?
Is that a No to torturing the Anti-Christ?
I know of pain, have studied it and learned its ways.
I harness it to save the world. I spit on him

and ready all my tools for the long night. He'll die,
I do not doubt - or care - but not before he talks.
I am familiar with these tools: the scalpel and
the probes, but some are new. The hammer and the irons.

Why in the mirror do I see myself
in wedding dress or nurse's uniform?
Why does my past life haunt me so? (I know, of course,
but she is dead until this job is done.)

And does it need to justify itself to you,
my new, enlightened self to that which clings to me?
Why will you not lie down and take your cue from him?
Why do you put my mother's face where his should be?

But yet it will not work, this blackmail that you try...
I've learned the techniques of persuasion, tried
them on our guest, but now we have not time. What we
must know, we must know now - and shall, I promise you!

I'll try the tape again, another night
of hearing his wife scream - this time with pain,
his pain to make her pain more real to him -
and that should do the trick. He'll crack.

All this he's brought upon himself - and me.
I'll kill him for the trouble he has caused. So like
his kind. How dare he put me through all this!
Where's his compassion for his fellow man?

I am submitting this poem to Poets United for their Poetry Pantry #72.