Anxious Poem

[matsunosuperfan]

I often end poems with a sort of dramatic line
I’d like to think it’s a bad habit

everything has to be:
life changing
inspiring
ugly
beautiful
black
off-white

see
just there
I could have ended with
“i should stop and smell the roses”

I'm not convinced by this one yet. It's very well trod ground; I tried a similar thing earlier this month and it also had trouble lifting off. The whole meta ars poetic thing is probably one of those forms where the options are inevitably binary; it's either brilliant or boring. This one's not brilliant yet.

I don't get the ending. Seems to be trying to make some kind of commentary on cliche? Ironically, most of the action of the poem, including this gesture, is kind of cliche. 

The first 2 lines are great: hooky, compelling as heck, and the speaker invites trust by admitting "bad habits." What's missing for me is some kind of turn; the progression of discourse never really take me anywhere new once the initial direction is established

Beware the opaque closing gesture. It can be quite seductive. Doing Bukowski style too often is bad for the liver...