I Am the Sun
︎︎︎ Denzel Rust
︎ Sept 19, 2026
I am the Sun.
Blazing creator of everything alive.
Nuclear shadow of the Judaic G-d.
Author of time’s echoed divisions.
Rotations we call days,
Or seasons,
Or years.
I am your father.
Maintainer of absolute authority.
Donor of fertilizing energy which you parasocially absorb.
I give and take back nothing, in arrowed extensions of solar release.
Emissions, injections, medicinal rays.
Touching the face of the world from a vantage point far away.
Cooking you,
Slowly,
Everything living within my frame,
Growing or wilting,
Sizzling with life.
Do not look at me.
Like Moses at Sinai, no one may see me and live.
Invisible Patriarch of your scattered generations.
Hydrogen spotlight on the drama of creation.
Do not look at me or I will blind you.
Sear the seams of the sclera.
The edge of your eyes.
Make it so that even when you shut them,
my shaking neon outline hovers on
the darkness and the void.
Make it so that when you try and shut them harder,
the symbols only shake.
My colors are the only ones you can see with your eyes closed.
My gaze is the only one you’re not allowed to meet.
I am calm.
I am round.
Giver of cancer.
Giver of joy.
Giver of testosterone.
Let me wake your dormant sun cells, or they’ll sleep until they die.
Make them swim through streams of blood,
through veins and nerves, till they
lightly descend and give power to your balls.
May your balls become ignited.
May they become factories of life.
Your skin are the leaves of the trees.
Taking me in and being built with me,
Bringing you color and becoming tan with me,
Being burned by me,
Drying out with me,
Acute pains when you stretch or when you bend because of me.
The ends crusty and dead on you,
And then falling like autumn,
Clearing the way to be reborn in another
huge cohort of vast and varied clones.
Any time.
Any day.
Hopeful rush just past the front door.
Clean topical vitamins.
Making you lighter. Swifter.
Giving you smooth and easy steps
as your secret restful rhythms get set and
finely tuned.
Then later,
When the circadian signals sing,
She comes out,
Shining,
And lays out on the sky.
She is the Moon.
Crystal, cool, and calcium.
Coy.
Indifferent.
Still.
I don’t understand her cycles.
I don’t know where she goes.
Staring at her.
Tracking her.
What does this face mean and that face mean?
What made her?
Does she care?
What’s hidden in her swells and tides,
Her shades and shapes,
Her silent signs?
I will one day burn out.
I will one day be spent.
I will become bloated and lose my boundaries,
And then shed my scales till I’m just a core.
I will have no more leaves or bark.
No more skin or heat to give.
I will go cold,
And quiet,
And more like her.
It’s four fifty-one.
September eighteenth,
Twenty
Twenty
Six.
Blazing creator of everything alive.
Nuclear shadow of the Judaic G-d.
Author of time’s echoed divisions.
Rotations we call days,
Or seasons,
Or years.
I am your father.
Maintainer of absolute authority.
Donor of fertilizing energy which you parasocially absorb.
I give and take back nothing, in arrowed extensions of solar release.
Emissions, injections, medicinal rays.
Touching the face of the world from a vantage point far away.
Cooking you,
Slowly,
Everything living within my frame,
Growing or wilting,
Sizzling with life.
Do not look at me.
Like Moses at Sinai, no one may see me and live.
Invisible Patriarch of your scattered generations.
Hydrogen spotlight on the drama of creation.
Do not look at me or I will blind you.
Sear the seams of the sclera.
The edge of your eyes.
Make it so that even when you shut them,
my shaking neon outline hovers on
the darkness and the void.
Make it so that when you try and shut them harder,
the symbols only shake.
My colors are the only ones you can see with your eyes closed.
My gaze is the only one you’re not allowed to meet.
I am calm.
I am round.
Giver of cancer.
Giver of joy.
Giver of testosterone.
Let me wake your dormant sun cells, or they’ll sleep until they die.
Make them swim through streams of blood,
through veins and nerves, till they
lightly descend and give power to your balls.
May your balls become ignited.
May they become factories of life.
Your skin are the leaves of the trees.
Taking me in and being built with me,
Bringing you color and becoming tan with me,
Being burned by me,
Drying out with me,
Acute pains when you stretch or when you bend because of me.
The ends crusty and dead on you,
And then falling like autumn,
Clearing the way to be reborn in another
huge cohort of vast and varied clones.
Any time.
Any day.
Hopeful rush just past the front door.
Clean topical vitamins.
Making you lighter. Swifter.
Giving you smooth and easy steps
as your secret restful rhythms get set and
finely tuned.
Then later,
When the circadian signals sing,
She comes out,
Shining,
And lays out on the sky.
She is the Moon.
Crystal, cool, and calcium.
Coy.
Indifferent.
Still.
I don’t understand her cycles.
I don’t know where she goes.
Staring at her.
Tracking her.
What does this face mean and that face mean?
What made her?
Does she care?
What’s hidden in her swells and tides,
Her shades and shapes,
Her silent signs?
I will one day burn out.
I will one day be spent.
I will become bloated and lose my boundaries,
And then shed my scales till I’m just a core.
I will have no more leaves or bark.
No more skin or heat to give.
I will go cold,
And quiet,
And more like her.
It’s four fifty-one.
September eighteenth,
Twenty
Twenty
Six.
Denzel Rust is the managing editor of MAMA Magazine, an audio documentarian, and the author of Mixtape Hyperborea (Louria Press, 2026).