Young Writers Society

You know how I work. Mind the edges; take with salt.

The lens is opaque.

This introduction is leading - but empty. The lens is fleeting; the lens is gone; was there significance to the lens?

Deception rests on every surface -/an invisible coat of slime.

This is good - it should be your introduction. It is inherently significant; of its own right, its stands. The lens does not.

Lines as fine as spiders' silky threads/divide reality from illusion./Our senses lie./Our brothers confuse us.

Here, I break. Brothers? Interesting - but where does it go? What topic is hereing explored? There is nothing of these Brothers. Again, there is no significance to this line, yet it stands alone.
A certain degree of vagueness is permissible in all poetry - necessary, even - but too much leaves the reader unfulfilled.

Our heads brim/with little cunning voices/that trick us.

Remember the 3 egregious "p"s? "That" is a preposition. Hence, I would restructure the last line here to avoid that preposition - which is not hard. "They trick us" "tricky voices" "voices make us fools" "voices oozing slime" (because deception is slime, yes?), et cetera.

Vague and odd shapes/are alone in our view.

Superfluous words abound here. Remove the conjunction; remove the conjugation of "to be" as well. It's all about the active voice. As follows: "Vague, odd shapes/alone in our view." Poetry does not require complete sentences.
The remainder of your introductory stanza is good. I have no qualms.

Where are we?/What are we?/When we find we can't/satisfy the burning thirst/we run about like mad men,/ constantly spurring ourselves

Gold like diamonds, and then "constantly spurring ourselves" breaks it for me. If I were to take great license in suggesting revisions here, I may suggest "we can't/slake the thirst/we run about mad men,/burning throats exert." To be more modest, I suggest you revise the "spurring ourselves" line to not use "constantly" or "ourselves" - those words are a bit on the loquacious side, and the point could be more poetically put (in my opinion).

toward an emptiness we've given/a significance./We see everyone does the same./That brings us comfort.

This is good, but can (of course) be better. A few suggestions: break around emptiness (to create more fluidity). A poet must balance flow with brusque passes - and this brusque pass (jarring break) does not seem to serve a good purpose - so it seems a good place to flow instead. Also, "a" is a "p"reposition. And it is unneeded. Then the last two lines, I would revise to shorten, but not otherwise greatly change (and I would avoid "That" as a starting word in the last line). So, altogether:
"toward an emptiness/we've given significance./We see others do the same/comfort we derive from that shared pain."

In daylight it is possible to forget the fear.

Comma splice. Delete commas (almost) anytime you can.

In a crowd, we can pretend

Avoid that preposition! Suggestion: "In crowds we can pretend"

But at night, the cold iron taste/builds a nest in our mouth again/and we start to dig.

I like what you are getting at - I like the way you work up to the grave imagery at the end. However, this couple lines can be less egregious. "at," "the," and "a" can all be removed. And you can parallel "in daylight" by starting the same - i.e.; "In darkness, cold iron/renews its nest inside our mouth./We start digging." Basically verb-tense changes, and the removal of prepositions - general revision stuff. But it makes a difference, at least in my mind; hopefully you will agree.

We rip away the black veil/more frantically than we run away/from uncertainty.

I find this to be convoluted. "Black" does nothing to significantly alter the veil, and I feel that running from uncertainty has not been a theme of the poem (not so explicitly). I would shorten (even merge the two lines).

In silence, we hear the pounding,/ticking toward an end.

I don't think of pounding as making a tick sound, personally. Also, if you use "the" in the first line, parallel it in both clauses. I.e.; "In the silence, we hear the pounding."

Under our skin, white despair courses.

Is white in reference to bones? I feel this color descriptor is somewhat ill-connected to the bones two lines down, if that is the case. Also, put a period after the third-last line to separate your conclusion.

we shiver,/as we sit by the grave we have dug.

Remove the comma separating your lines, it's incorrect. Also you can remove "have" from "have dug," and I think it will be as good (if not better) an ending.

Overall
Excellent work. While there are some technical complications, your general tone is attractive and your emotion complex. I can appreciate the detail in the idea, but only after analyzing (and occasionally stumbling) over some of the lines. If you can clarify a few things, sacrifice a few artistic moments (which were lost on this reader) - for instance, sacrifice "Brothers" and the opaque lens - and pluck for parsimony, it's quite the read.

~Skorlir

Hi there, Panther.

I like the ideas you're trying to convey here. They're interesting, and I think this is a good start.

That being said, I do think this needs a little work.

This poem is about finding understanding in a world that does its best to hide it from us, yes? So why is the speaker so sure of the questions they're asking? I think that you should use more images in fragments to create a feeling of confusion. If you're writing about confusion, you should make the format of the poem feel that way. I'm not telling you to make it confusing, just to create more of a feeling of that. For example:

Where are we?
What do we know about ourselves?

Instead of asking these questions, ask something different. Don't ask "Where are we?" Ask, "When did we get lost among so many cracked doll masks and china plates?" Or "Where did the pine needle friends and slash-tire hours go?" Make images that represent other things (symbols) and incorporate them into your poem. It will make for a more interesting read as well as a more complex poem.

I appreciate your effort in the last stanza to illustrate with dirt. Nice. However, I want to know more about the dirt. Are you in a forest? Or is this the last patch of earth in the middle of a big city? Overall, it would help the poem if you established a setting, or at least a common set of images. It shows more about the speaker than you would think.

Your doughnut simile mars the tone of the poem. The first line is great. Then you start talking about doughnuts. I don't think that's a particularly good way to start a poem. It struck me as funny when this isn't a funny poem.

Another thing I'd like to show you is using more descriptive and active verbs. If you use more descriptive verbs, you can cut down on wordiness, and in poetry, less is more. For example, instead of saying

Our heads are brimming

You should just say

our heads brim

to create a stronger line.

Another thing similar to that is this line:

Lines as fine as the silk of a spider

You should say "spider's silk" to cut down on wordiness.

with little cunning voices
that trick us.

I think you should change this to

with tricky little voices

When we find we can't
satisfy that burning thirst
we run about like mad men,
constantly spur ourselves
toward an emptiness we've given
a significance.

This part is great. I think it's the strongest part in the poem. There are two things (grammar things) that need changing:
-comma after thirst
-spur should be spurring
Also, I think you should change "an" before emptiness to "the" to create a bit more strength there (and take out the "a" before significance).

Altogether, you have a good start. I can't wait to see this when it's more polished. I hope that this review was helpful to you. Happy writing!