[Suzerain of Sheol]

This one, for the record, has nothing to do with my username, beyond my like of the word, I suppose. It's about the sociological force of religion over human history.

Suzerain

Not for want,
nor my precious vanity;
I am spared of vindication,
held aloft on quivering strings
watching the birth of oblivion,
waters rising to the ether's cusp,
gasping at ghosts.

And it wasn't diffidence that stayed my hand,
heeding the sound of breaking bones less the snapping of the quill.
More, I could not write the registry of Time without bias.

Denied the tide,
my vigil is relieved by luminous shadows,
their cowls concealing the effigy of wings,
though I fear the thought of folded fingers hiding knives.

While emotions flounder, a foundation unsettled,
I find myself lashed to vertigo:
wracked by poles,
stretched for significance.

Not for piety,
nor the silence of dead sirens,
I remake myself, contesting the mold,
besieging the world,
nestled snug between columns of faith,
far from reticence; culled of cowardice,
merely masked by malice
for a future more benign.