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“I want my pap’s shop,” he said.
“I want a wife,
I want Kids,
And then I’m done.
I want to be dead by thirty-five.”
 
“Well, then, in that case,” John said,
“Why not go home,
Get a gun,
Blow your brains out?
You’ve already embraced your own death.”
 
But he lived in a valley,
In rural Pennsylvania,
His universe was sheltered,
Limited in scope and size.
 
“We’ll invade and conquer them,
Depose tyrants,
For greater good,
Freedom and democracy for all,”
 
“We’ll replace all the tyrants
With elections
Due process
Eventually they’ll be just like us.”
 
But we all live in the valley.

– Dan Sutton, 2008

North and Damen
3:10 AM
The L train grinds.
His mind burned out,

Smoking Joe is playing with toys.

Snort and swallow:
Sinuses burn;
A bitterness
behind the tongue:

Something to chase away the cold.

Estelle’s closes:
Out of the smoke,
The noise recedes.
Sudden laughter:

Carlos is pissing in the street.

South on Damen,
40 below.
In Wicker Park
Cardboard and rags:

The bums die quickly in winter.

The drug hits hard,
The city shines,
Outlined in light,
Clear as water,

The way things were when we were young.

– Dan Sutton, 2006

“Fuck it,” I said,
What’s the point?
You push and you push,
and it doesn’t matter because…

“But wouldn’t it be nice,” she said,
“if everything were different.
Then we could…”

But things aren’t different.
Like Sisyphus pushing the stone,
Working harder and harder,
But he had it easy,
His feet didn’t slip.

Slippery feet
People whose sole purpose
is to undermine,
to take,
to grasp,

Never to create,
Never to contribute,
Never to construct,
Never to give back,

So you push and you push
But your feet won’t stick
They keep slipping,
They keep taking,
And won’t stop.

Even Sisyphus never pushed this hard.

– Dan Sutton, 2008