December 23rd-- revision 2

[heslopian]

revision

His grumbles snag on plastic branches
emerging from eleven months of peace. Great opening lines, equating the abstract with the concrete in a subtle way. Grumbles = discontent, caused by Christmas (plastic branches), which comes uninvited after a peaceful year (eleven months of peace).
The holiday's cheer doesn't reach this tree,
three feet high and so naked even Charlie Is "Charlie" someone relevant to the narrator, or a cultural analogy (like a reference to Charlie Brown)?
might sigh.

Tilting to one side it seems to wiggle
to the other side of the desk, as bits
of coated green float gently to the tiles,
torn off by painted stars and a man
with a white beard and no time for this. This verse subtly personifies the tree, I think, as a stooped and ineffectual old man, collapsing under his burden of years. What we also get a sense of is destruction, discontent and disease. The tree falling apart, no-one caring enough to repair it. It's like Nietzsche distilled in a snowglobe

As balls and lights and silver garlands
fill the lonely gaps he wonders
Why bother? when four walls enclose the secret What "secret"? This feels too specific and loaded to fit your generally vague, surveying tone.
and not even the window lets out a peep.

Resigned eyes survey this scene: his life
without her touch. How many more to come? So I'm guessing that this woman's absense is the secret? I still feel that this should be vaguer, to fit your previous tone. Maybe you could remove the female pronoun? "His life without touch" would be even sadder, I think, as it would imply that he's never known intimacy.
Salty gripes jerk from his throat and scuttle down
to rest inside the stocking’s toe.

Critique is JMHO, of course. I enjoyed this poem for its very subtle evocation of despair concealed in shallow gestures. Thank you for the read