Criminals

What about the goons?

Those criminals thwarted and left for dead in every action movie for the past thirty years. I'm sure at least a dozen survived the slaughters. I'm sure at least one or two came out if it reformed. This one who quit working for Columbian drug smugglers is now an insurance salesman who makes his kids say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. Or this one, with a trachea, in some VA Memorial Hospital in New Jersey. He sits by the window in his wheelchair holding the wooden figurines of animals he made in a whittling class. He hates the shade of green of his hospital gown. It reminds him of how water always looks in the rivers and lakes up north. He knows how good water can hide what we want lost. He knows water is the greatest liar. He'll tell you to never trust a man who takes a shower more than twice a day. He'll tell you failure is like cancer. He'll tell you that it always comes long before anyone notices and once they do its too late.

~

Light is the builder.

You're entire world is shaped by light. It frees and confines. You live by the code of broad daylight. That expression which seems too old to be used. That expression which seems like a farmer's saying that suburbanites adapted into a phrase synonymous with fear. You say the crime happened in broad daylight. Why is this surprising? What does the light in its narrowness or its thickest have to do with safety? What reflects, what illuminates, does not offer disciplinary action. It is not a basis of conduct.

You have nothing to say about coarse shadows.

~

There is no difference between saving the world and destroying it.

Ask any hero. Those bent on destruction have a codependent relationship with those striving to maintain order. This is why the policeman seems to lovingly embrace the felon he's pinned to the concrete. This is why the hero rarely murders his arch nemesis. They work outside our indifference. Each movement of good vs. evil makes little difference. We battle routine. We battle the slow burn of time. We fight with what little wisdom we've gathered from experience.

We tell ourselves we're good.