[Suzerain of Sheol]

Wow, has it really been a month since I last wrote a poem?

Momentary

We carry the gift
of the most humane hubris,
a vanity only the blind can bear.
In the hallmark of this splendid suffering,
we have become sovereign,
fettered only by a conceptual damnation.
A fundamental sentence of loss.

We are a kind
of promiscuous precision,
wearying the world with gratitude.
With all the trappings of divine denial,
we reign like a palsied spider
in triumphal vigil from the refuse-throne.
An ascendancy of perspective.

We bear the seal
of every honor unearned,
decorating history with meaning.
For all the grace of these mortal mercies,
we ring hollow to the reckoning,
mantled in the dross of lifetimes.
Endowed with the sublime justice of dying.