Absence

[ellajam]

Hi, belkar, welcome to the Pig Pen. I've read this many times but find it difficult to critique. I find the beginning so cliche ridden I fear you are losing readers who never get to your fine final strophe. I've put a few notes below.

Missing is a pain that is inequitable.
It can not fit within the small confines of
logic, or reason, time or space.
It is the presence of the absence.
The infinite weight of the endless void.
A tug on the heart. A ghost who drifts
through the body leaving a gap.  
At the tips of the fingers but just out of reach.
I am finding nothing new here, a bunch of cliches strung together.

It isn't simply the feeling of grief, or despair.
Those are too kind of emotions. This is awkward.
This is not a wound that heals over in  
allocations of time or effort.
To fight the feeling is to give it power.
By seeing the problem, one lets it
make a home within the heart.
Again, nothing really new here.

Letting go is worse than simply missing.
It is the choice to feel that pain. To put
on the vestige of a masochist and drink
the rotten poison that eats from the inside.
Nothing replaces the piece you willingly took
from yourself. Reason cannot force my heart  
to quicken its sluggish, somber beat,
or quell the waves crashing at the back of my eyes.  
Sorry, it just sounds same old, same old to me.

I cannot take off the mask of constant regret.
Cannot shake the feeling that it was a mistake
to ever dream of letting go, to ever attempt to wipe
the smile from my dreams, to ever force the chitter
of her laughter from the rafters of my mind like they  I love chitter and it's a beautiful image. I might have chose a different bird, maybe wrens.
were doves scattered into the blanketed night.  
There is nothing to do but let her slip away.  
Nothing to do but watch the memories  
drain like sand in the hourglass of time.

Letting go isn't a hiker resting his pack to the ground,
it is the act of wiping the sweat, blood and tears
from his face and picking burlap sacks of rice
and dragging them until all of the rice have fallen Great image here.
out of the small holes in the fabric. And the worst
part is, as I stand at the top of the mountain, Not a fan of And the worst part is.
a trail of rice snaking beneath my feet outlining beautiful
the path I carved through the brush, with four or five
empty burlap sacks held in my hand, all I would
want is to share this sight with you.
I think this has great potential, you might want to rework the breaks, some are awkward and some just ineffective to me.

And just like that, my bags refill, and I start my trek once more.
strong ending.

I hope this helps a bit, and that someone else will come along to give you more useful advice. Best I could do.