Assorted Heroic Words: Photochronograph

an apparatus for recording very minute intervals of time

One of the mistakes
commonly made about
superhero folk
is that they might be considered
less than damaged,
that taking the law
into their own hands
automatically makes them
noble,
pure,
justified.

But what if
they're not?
What if
you can define them
as compromised,
not by the violence they choose to make
regardless of outcome,
an absence of malice,
purity of intent,
but rather
some unhealthy obsession,
resulting in a categorically
insane perspective?

What would you say
if told that Marty
lived the rest of his life
inside the moments
of the shooting,
that he spent all spare time
measuring and remeasuring
that signal event,
being warped by it
more and more,
fashioning a crude machine
that aided his efforts,
a photochronograph.

Would that negate all his other deeds?
Would framing Marty in such light
be sufficient
to condemn him forever
in the vicious court of public opinion?
Once poisoned,
always contaminated?
A psychopath
pinned forever,
culpable to a crime
he never committed?

A kingdom,
a kingdom for a horse,
is all he asks,
a hunchback of the mind,
skeletons thrust into history,
conjured by malice,
by lust for power,
the switch thrown
by greed for a throne,
an iron will
and an enemy
that could never be defeated,
and indeed celebrated
for all time...