Reality

[Lizzie]

Hi, AP! Welcome to the site. Looks like you got a solid read from Crundle, so I'll just add a couple of points.

Hello, I'm rather new to poetry, and I'd like some feedback on this piece, thanks in advance.

Reality
 
Aren’t we all confined within our own cages,
Forced to wander through the ages. -- I agree that these first two lines strike the reader as illogical. We're picturing cages, and now we're aimlessly wandering.
Strolling ever so serenely, -- 'serenely' does not mesh with the rest of the angst in the poem -- perhaps you mean something more like stoicism, an acceptance and stiff upper lip in the face of adversity? To me that's different then serenity, but that's just my reading.
Through all the grass and crafted scenery?
Through the halls of time
We tumble and stumble, and yet not a single grumble, -- and yet there is much grumbling in the poem...I think you need to give the speaker a consistent voice.
Is heard within the chime
Of this ever-familiar rhyme we mumble.
 
I’m sick of this constant flow -- the voice shift from speaking about the plight of the 'we' in the last stanza to now focusing on the 'I' is jarring -- whether you choose to write about the individual or the collective makes no difference in my eyes, as long as the perspective is consistent.
No highs, no lows, just a simple Joe.
This familiar tune we play, -- and now we're back to 'we'
Each and every single day.
Never ending. Serenading.
The same old streets we stroll through each day,
Same greetings, same faces, same goddamned Mondays.
 
I’m sick of being alive -- and back to 'I'.....the perspective changes are distracting. Makes the piece feel like disjointed bits of text stuck together rather then being a cohesive whole.
If being alive is what this is
Where is the drive? The strive?
Being alive?
 
Yet perhaps it’s better this way,
Don’t rekindle this snuffed out flame.
Let someone else be the armored knight,
Riding into glory within the light. -- within the light is awkward phrasing
 
Us commoners, what good do we know?
We’re just castaways, relics from an old yesterday.
Those hopes, visions, and dreams we once followed?
Ha! Who would have believed all that mumbo jumbo?
Maybe we’re all just miserable cargo
Doomed to ride this train indefinitely,
For all damned eternity.
 
Leave us be,
To wallow in our own sorrow
And hope not, for a better tomorrow.
 
And when morning comes, I’ll be back in my cage,
No fire, no light a rather pitiful sight.
You’ll hear the sound of dirty tears falling, -- these last two lines feel a little maudlin
Flowing through these halls,
Echoing.

Overall, I would spend more time showing the details of the struggle rather then just saying it's miserable or we're doomed. Solid imagery, metaphor, simile -- that's what's needed to evoke emotion in the reader. As a reader, I still feel disconnected from the struggle, and I believe that it's because I'm only being told about it and not shown.

Hope this helps some,

Cheers!

Lizzie