a penny and me tonight

Your compassionate camera
drops anchor at your navel.
Flashing blue-green
as the bitterness comes
streaming out of you.
Between the pillars
of flood and found,
I wobble some,
and raise the flag
pale as your cheek.

What gives?
Is this the height
saints tread upon,
that frayed the margins
of my meaning
and melted the letters
into a sticky confession?

I see the road,
that twisted road,
and hope no one
starts up the construction
before I am set on it.

Cranes are packed
away deep in the night,
the broken bits
of massive steel skyline
loaded onto the truck,
plucked out
of the panorama for good.

The empty form
filling up the warm
spacious indentations,
I think it will be here a while.
How you tried to warn me.
How I insisted on playing—

I eat my prophecy
with peaches and cream.
My sickness is nothing
more than a waking wet dream.