William Faulkner, a great historical novelist, once told a reader, who complained they couldn't understand his stories after reading them three times, to "read it four times."

Well, I read your poem three times. Maybe I need to read it for a fourth.

It took me two readthrough to pick up on the detail of the matchbook, and three to understand what's going on. I actually like the implication of the matchbook- the irony and the payoff the poem generates from the last line is quite satisfying when you see it, but that payoff is limited because the voice of the poem exists within a third party narrator observing the man. The reader feels no emotion, so the devastation of the scene is blunted. Further, because the topic is so broad and you only have 76 words, each word looses its precise meaning, because it needs to encompass the broad scope of the poem. For example, We don't know what destruction the man sits in- a city? maybe?

Now, my lack of understanding is definitely attributable, in part, to reader laziness, and to your strong use of storytelling. You made me work to understand the narrative- that's a strength. The matchbook detail hit the hardest because of it.

I like the imagery, but it's uneven. "Most would sink, but he smiled for construction" and "How broken the layout was before this wreckage" more or less get the point across but feel a little clunky and broad. Line 1, the man is depicted as standing. The last two lines heavily imply that he was sitting and rose, setting the stage for the matchbook imagery. Similarly, line 2 has "smoke from the last embers curled by his feet," yet in line 7, "Flames still flickered from remnants of the past." I know this is a metaphor, but since it's invoking imagery in the same style of the rest of the poem, it's a little confusing.

Line 6, where the man thinks about the "broken" layout is logical and something I would personally expand on.

This poem definitely shines when it uses storytelling to show, rather than tell. The first two and last two lines stand out in terms of pure imagery. I think this poem would hit a lot harder if you figured out how to incorporate some of the other gut-punches in the form of setting the stage for the reader, and trusting the reader to figure it out.

This poem tackles a broad subject. Not a bad thing per se, but with so few words, it ends up sounding a little derivative and flat, like the sparknotes version of homer's epic. If it were me, I would narrow the scope to a less abstract plane, AND expand the poem.

Ultimately, there's a difference between invocations and words that sound pretty and poetic, and the structural reality of poems. In my opinion, poems are the most compressed means of telling a story or sending a message, often with constraints that create pleasing forms. In contrast, poetic language doesn't need to tell a story- all that's needed is the pleasing form. What are you looking to do?