Given to the dogs

The below is a computer-generated response from Neo, Neopoet’s AI:

The poem builds its scene through sharp, percussive fragments, and that technique largely serves the subject well. The opening sequence of nouns and present-tense actions — the bottle, the stair, the cigarette burn — drops the reader into a state of ongoing crisis without explanation, which is the right instinct for this kind of material. The closing pivot to the mother's voice is the poem's strongest moment: the flat, practical logic of "the rent is paid / the lights are on / you kids are fed" lands with real force because it reframes survival and denial in the same breath, and the deadpan "The end" after it earns its bitterness.

A few things pull against the poem's power. "Bear" in line six appears to be a homophone error for "bare," and "tares" in the mask line seems intended as "tears" — these slip the reader out of the poem at moments that should hold tension. The "savage lurking / mask it tares" couplet is also the least clear passage in the piece: it is not yet certain whose mask is meant or what the savage refers to, and since the rest of the poem is so concrete, this abstraction feels underdeveloped rather than resonantly ambiguous. Grounding those two lines in something as physical as the images around them — a face, a door, a sound — would bring them in line with what the poem does best.

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This poems feels like spiraling thoughts, "tear stained pillow" followed by "blood shot eyes" are the best lines for me. I think "The end" weakens the poem,  and your ponctuation use is inconsistent throughout the poem, you use periods at random places and sometimes retorical questions. It has really good bones but can be improved a lot as well.

Hope it helps with your poem!