The Nuisance of Heart

[ellajam]

Hi, baifan, welcome to the pigpen. You pretty much pull off a difficult topic, the poem as a whole is readable and has some strong points in language and imagery. I like the title, some notes below.

The Nuisance of Heart

Cut your losses, swallow your words, float around. I like the opening cliches, they signal a common situation.
Those words are part of you now, tread carefully, take to the streets
And be scurried along in the flow, but don't let another word I like scurried here.
Spill from your face, lest you want to be mocked as I like "spill from your face", the distance implied, but you might cut "want to".
The rock in the river. Lest you want the last of your blood I don't get why a rock in the river is mocked.
To spill with your thoughts, you laid them out one after another
For anyone near to praise or to leer; you said I like "praise or leer".
How many?
She said
This many, take the rest back those are for you to keep forever,
And she took that many and smiled and said
I'll appreciate these
And you knew she would but the dejection was there.
Love the whole idea of this, what we carry forward with us and all the things we discard.

Come the next rain, you’ll think hard about it all,
For when it falls, the cool splash against your face
Will keep you awake as you sift through your heart
And decide what's worth how many tears, This is pretty blunt but it sits well with me.
And you can divvy your lonely appropriately.Love this line, divvy.
Rain falls when the sky slips—on these days
There is no need to look up, no one to be found,
But a galactic beauty to be found on the ground.
No shame to hide or cries to unsound,
All is falling, apart and admitted. Admirable comma.
I like these four lines, the finding of a source of power on earth and the hint of something other than depression.

Go inside and triple check your pipes,
The leak in the house might be an internal issue.
Patch them before they become an infernal issue. If you're patching "them", the pipes, is leak singular?
The rain is only there to emphasize
Broken infrastructure.
I like the thought here, I'm not sure "broken" is the best word choice.

And the wind slamming violently into your fragile glass window I have a problem here, windows are quite strong against rain unless they are cracked, I think fragile is wrong plus you use it below. Do you need to tell me windows are glass?
Might draw your attention to your feelings of loss. Feelings of loss could be said in a more interesting way.
It might send you backwards, reeling through time,
To before you saw heartbreak on the horizon, Again, heartbreak on the horizon is a cliche, think of a new way to say it.
When you were feeding those lovewords Strong line.
So that they could breathe and walk and fly and thrive
And sing honestly and richly with life and mean a lot.
Before she said, "This will do. The rest is for you." And, of course,
You can't have all those live lovewords flapping around in your head; Love this image.
They might wake the sleeping heart dormant in your chest,
And to interrupt its rest would be tantamount to death, Oh, the drama, but appropriate, we've all felt it.
So what can you do but put those lovewords to death?
And take the executioner's blade to their thin fragile necks? I'd go with thin or fragile or neither.
And apologize: "My bad, really, sorry—who's next?" Made me smile.
"You weren't meant to love after all." Yes, and took the smile right back.
The wind might recall their violent, untimely fall.

And put it in pattern, in context, in stride,
And pack what's important in a small knapsack,
And take all your pain along for the ride, I'd cut this line (replace for your rhyme scheme).
And mind your shadow, tailing your back,
And keep a story or two, heavy they are, Not a fan of the phrasing of "heavy they are"
And pictures, here and there, across age,
And run with fearful zest, fast and far, fearful zest is interesting.
And rest when you're certain you're far from the stage.

And don't forget the dreams long past,
As you stand where you had hoped they would land. Love these two lines.
As time rolls on, and as life slips fast,
We scrabble around at whatever we can.

And don't forget the quieter thoughts,
Two bodies squeezed tight on a one-man cot,
Telephones, trains, letters and hands,
Pajamas and coffee and music stands,
Holding umbrellas and heart-to-heart talks,
Sunset dinners and sunrise walks.

Cherry words of merry song.
Heavy words of weary song.
Words, words—gone before long.
I'd cut these two stanzas down to:

And don't forget the quiter thoughts
Pajamas and coffee and music stands
Words, words—gone before long.

I don't find the rest has any cumulative effect. I like the way the poem slips into rhyme but I don't think it gains at the end to make the cliche of the whole situation more obvious. It works but becomes boring to read, it goes back to the opening but went on too long for me.

I hope this helps, thanks for the read.