by Sean Murphy.
On April 15, 1998, under house arrest, Pol Pot dies in his sleep, apparently of natural causes.
You read that and think: there truly is no God,
no justice, no sense, no anything fair or good.
A remorseless murderer, passing in his sleep
and not hanging upside down, his internal organs
splashed in a red pool beneath him, the engine
of what made his sadistic engine run the last thing
he’d ever see? Not alone, shivering, in a darkened,
dank jail cell, or else on the public square, the sounds
of jeering survivors hastening his descent to Hell?
But let’s consider what often occurs when we’re not
awake: dreams, which don’t always accommodate
our private hopes and hungers; even the quietest mind
can’t quell the messy machinery of the mind’s biology,
and perhaps the most sanguine psychopath still broods,
knowing that power without peace and silence without
consent is an ersatz state of affairs, that being feared,
through intimidation, brings neither peace nor purpose.
And perhaps it’s only at night, alone and unprotected,
while in the grip of forces that control craven tyrants
and their puny designs, the balance is laid bare—
this is where an evil soul is imprisoned, powerless
to prevent or escape the cascading spiritual horrors
that exist only in the killing fields of the mind, forever.