hangnail

[rbamssy]

cool leather seating

sits polished

reflecting buzzing streetlamps
in satin finish

bugs zip past your eye, intent
on unseen light

and two gazes
meet

your eyes dart quickly to your
hidden thumbs, and

tears threaten to overflow
your eyelids

tempting as the hangnail is,
you know better

than to try and
rip it out

You might ask yourself why this deserves such a short line - does "sits polished" hold up as a two word phrase in the spotlight? How about "and two gazes" or "your eyelids" or "meet"?

I think this draft is using a short line for no compelling formal reason. Here it is with less insistent brevity: 

cool leather seating sits polished, reflecting 
buzzing streetlamps in satin finish
bugs zip past your eye, intent on unseen light

two gazes meet

your eyes dart quickly to your hidden thumbs
tears threaten to overflow your eyelids
tempting as the hangnail is, you know 

better than to try 
and rip it out
--

That's already a lot more readable to me, and loses the annoying sense of "poet is trying really hard to be artsy." Not every other word deserves emphasis.

Wow, thank you so much that actually makes so much sense! I don't know why it took me this long to realize that having a lot of shorter lines kind of ruins the poem so thank you! I'm gonna go back to the drawing board with that advice in mind and hopefully come out with something beautiful.

---

cool leather seating

sits polished - polished is redundant given its reflecting. I guess it implies it's been sat in a lot but that doesn't seem interesting.

reflecting buzzing streetlamps - I'm now confused if the speaker is inside or outside. Maybe it's a leather chair on a porch?
in satin finish - saying almost the same thing for the 3rd time.

bugs zip past your eye, intent
on unseen light

and two gazes
meet

your eyes dart quickly to your
hidden thumbs, and - can your eyes dart to your thumbs if they're hidden?

tears threaten to overflow
your eyelids - too explicit / melodramatic for my taste, the poem would work fine without this stanza

tempting as the hangnail is,
you know better

than to try and
rip it out

I like the core of this, it's a nice mood + I like the ending. The main issues are a bit of redundancy, too many adjectives, and the stanza about the tears being too explicit for my taste. I'm also a bit confused by some of the line breaks, they seem a bit arbitrary.

Thank you for the feedback! I can definitely see how redundant some of my language is and another reply really hit home for me that the line breaks are just not working. As for the thumb comment I think you're right and I should phrase it better, I meant to create the image of looking down at your hands and fidgeting cause that's what I do when I'm anxious.