Where are your
architecture critics now

At midnight I am a resident of myself
soft and yellow as the butter I craved for five years
and fearing collapse into my own foundations. My wife keeps
the island wrapped around her, singing as she sleeps:

On a nearby latitude a bunker has been built
viewed south you call it gratitude
viewed north you call it guilt.

If only. Up on the hill, away from home’s carrion
I bite the useless blade of my pencil. A decade
of keeping the perfect doll’s house for this. If I could laugh
I’d call it modern but the concrete fills my mouth like a brace.

The question bites my dreams again and again.
Bullets spat from the gun-hard face
of a commandant I have never seen. I shan’t go back to bed.