But then he said:
“No, no, let it be fucked!
Let the bombs rain down,
Pulverize this shit.
Let them be our final
Catharsis,
Cleansing:
Let them purify us,
Exalt us:
Flense us of ourselves.
Let the sun shine through
The dust,
The smoke:
The vaporized remnants
Of the remnants of our lives.
And as the dust settles
To the ground,
To the beginning,
Let the sun illuminate
The essence of our being
In clarity.”
– Dan Sutton, 1/28/2012
Whenever people perpetrate a horror,
atrocity or murder foul – whatever,
it’s labelled thus: as inhumanity…
…but only humans perpetrate these acts
and so I must point out incisively
that, far from being inhumanity,
these things express our base Humanity.
And if you wish to form an argument
against this logic I have plainly shown,
I cannot see the basis of your thoughts.
For wishing that a thing is true does not
in actual fact precipitate that truth,
but will instead serve only to delude
and could in certain cases get you killed
along with those who choose to share that lie,
based as it is in hatred of one’s race
and by extension also of one’s self.
The species rises slowly from the slime
of prehistoric somnolescence where
the basic instincts of the feral ape
are painfully replaced with social grace
but look at all our morals, laws and codes
and see that they are nothing more nor less
than opposites of instincts we possess:
negation, then, of what we really are;
confliction brought upon us by ourselves…
…no wonder that from time to time we do
these things to one another – for we must
in periodic, self-relieving haste
allow ourselves catharsis and revert
to what we really are under our lies,
our moralising speeches and veneer
of grace, of elevated mental state:
we’re unrepentant, predatory fiends.
- Dan Sutton, 03/2011
In the very centre of the sun
the pressure is so great that anyone
remotely sane can’t hope to comprehend
its state, so now, my friends, try to extend
your understanding thus: the speed of light
will change inside a fluid and it might
in dense enough a gas become so slow
(in fact, with modern science we now know)
it’s just a tiny fraction of the speed
it has in spatial vacuum: indeed
the density inside that solar sphere
is so extreme, light’s speed comes very near
to nothing: the result of this abstraction
will slow its speed to but a tiny fraction
so light produced inside the stellar core
crawls outward at a slow, slow speed, therefore
light takes two hundred thousand earthly years
to reach the stellar surface: it appears
the light now breaking loose upon our world
was made before our history unfurled…
…Technology and wonders that we see
took equal time before they came to be
the pressure of our prehistoric state
so great our thoughts took aeons to collate
but as the knowledge left our darkened minds
emerging to the surface where it shines
developmental speed’s acceleration
became observable: this generation
learns and builds with speeds not known before
we fear the growth of scientific lore
and wonder if the world’s destruction looms
and if it happens, whether one assumes
that fate will overtake us without warning
eight minutes and a half between its dawning
and its final stroke: for is that not
the time light takes to reach us from its hot
and fiery source: that sun up in our sky
whose synchronicity with us just might imply
that theory has merit (which is dire)
and if it’s true I’ll laugh as I expire.
- Dan Sutton, 01/2011
In those days we were young and full of hope
and faith and greed and love’s neurotic bile
In ignorance and haste we threw away
What most would take a lifetime to attain
And looking back I cannot truly say
What drove us to that point of no return
When madness took us to that stony brink
Where sanity and reason took their leave.
We changed in time but nothing really changed
Essentially we are the very same
Unmodified in essence; vicious still
For no one ever changes deep inside
The primal force of deep emotion draws
Its essence from the earliest of years
We learned our lessons young: before we met
in half forgotten adolescent days.
Like lions circling ’round each other still
Each always knowing where the other stands
The space between us carefully maintained
A no-man’s land of safety: cool detente
Protects us both from facing what we are
(Though in those years we did learn to accept
Ourselves in essence: questioning our thoughts
And motives; self-acceptance our reward).
Alone, I function better; for I know
My idiosyncratic, thorny mind
With brambles sharp and traps of spiders’ silk
Will kill the unsuspecting, hopeful dreams
Of those who would, in love of something new
Want me to be the thing they think they need
They never sense the predator beneath
Carnivorous with venom, teeth and claws.
And what of you: are you that deadly thing
That in my mind will always have its place
Or have you truly left all that behind
Become a cat where once there was a lion
Malevolent and mighty in its rage?
For there’s the spark: that misanthropic gaze
From up on high: the lowly human ants
whose separation from us was our bond.
- Dan Sutton, 09/2010
Looking at them, I see a shroud
over their minds, in their psyches
around their lives, immutable
perfectly formed: a custom niche
tailored, fitted, so warm and safe
Who can point out the fallacy?
They tiptoe through their careful lives
Arriving safely at their deaths
with trusting smiles, like worker ants…
then they are gone, and all for what?
Ephemeral, their lives snuffed out
by dint of time; in slavery
they cannot see – and then at last,
when death arrives, do they suspect
although too late, what could have been?
Society: an evil hive
to sacrifice its very flesh
and serve itself; those human cells
their trusting minds, smiling faces
gazing upward, awaiting death.
Weep for yourself and not for them.
Their apathy, their faith and hope
become your death – for in their trust
of shining lies they abrogate
all sense of self – their doom is yours.
Can you see it? Understand it?
How angry does it make you feel?
Your immortality destroyed
by faith and hope and baseless trust,
pernicious methods of control.
The perpetrators dead and gone
their motivation lost to time
but blindly followed nonetheless
from hopeless birth in screaming pain
to futile death and nothingness.
Dan Sutton – 8/2/2010