Who Knows?

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
The Shadow knows.

And thanks to the wonders of modern communication, we all know if we allow ourselves to look at the blackness around us.

TV, the internet, movies, newspapers, infojournalism, all of these and more bring the most evil, sickening, disgusting and vile images either in print or visual, into our homes on an almost daily basis.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,204583,00.html

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,204601,00.html

If there is a hell such a those bible thumpers say, I hope there is an especially fiery place for such vermin as the rats who commit these crimes.

But, what of the blackness inside each of us?

I have pulled the trigger on fellow human beings. Seen them fall. Sent rockets punching thru torsos ripping them into unidentifiable bits of flesh.

I've witnessed ARVN troops abusing the bodies of female NVA soldiers by sticking their pointed little yellow peckers into every natural and scrapnel created hole they could find, after we finished our gun run.

I've seen dead bodies by the side of the road, left out in the tropical sun, to bloat and then to wither to shrunken shells when the gas leaves them.

War, you may say. Justifable at the time. But what of the images that come at other times?

I've imagined squeezing the trigger on someone who I preceive as doing me wrong.

I know how to kill with a knife so as to rip the heart and lungs to shreds, without causing the moans and gurgling of someones throat after having slit it from ear to ear.

I've read the writings of Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, that gargole that lives in Maine. Seen the thought processes of Oliver Stone brought to life on the silver screen.


The decision has already been made as to what to do to an intruder in my home, or to someone who harms one single hair of a loved ones head.

Do we profit by knowing what might be? By knowing what evil lurks within? Mankind doesn't seem to have improved in some respects over the thousands of years of recorded history. Despots have slaughtered their millions. Pol Pot, Idi Amin, Saddam Huessain, Stalin, Hitler, Mao Tae Tsung. These are only some of the ones who have lived and slaughtered within my lifetime. Who is to say that they couldn't do the same if given the chance. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutly. What causes one person to become a Billy Graham, and another to become a Mohammaud. One can value anothers life and rights and another to care only for power over others.

Is it that one can control themself, and the other wants only to control others?

There are within me black spots. Fertile as Wisconsin bottom land. Capable of growing either briars or roses.

Think I'll stick with Kudzu. The blooms smell sweeter. As I try to hide within its shadows.