Hello out there, this is part of a small poetry anthology I'm working on for my creative writing class' final project. Criticism and suggestions would be greatly appreciated, because then maybe I could boost up my mark. 
Here's the rough draft:
Music isn't
just an escape,
a pass time,
background noise.
Its a second
heart beat,
a vine curling
around my
veins,
its ink polluting
my blood;
an addictive
drug.
Headphones,
a permanent
fixture on my head.
Not that I'm
ignoring my
environment,
or shutting you
out.
I'm not
an angry youth,
plotting pain,
planning death.
This habitat
doesn't always
feel like home,
but familiar sounds
make it
easier to
cope with the
unknown.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
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Well, this review is probably more than a little late to help with the final project bit, but here I am to review, nonetheless. Hopefully you'll be able to apply the advice in this review to future poems.
All the lines in this poem were rather short, which gave it an overall feeling of choppiness. Now, while choppiness can be used to great effect, it doesn't really work for this poem. Instead, it feels like the narrator has some sort of speech impediment that causes them to pause in rather strange places for unusual time periods.
Every time a line ends, there's a pause as your readers' eyes move from the end of the line to the start of the next. While this pause isn't as long as a comma's pause, it's still substantial, and you need to account for it. otherwise you get the choppy flow due to all the unnatural pauses in your readers' reading.
A poem about music really, really needs a solid. smooth flow to reinforce the theme, especially if it has no set rhythm. Right now, there is no solid, smooth flow, and so your poem subtly sabotages its own theme by being choppy.
I'd suggest reading this piece aloud and, if you can, getting someone to read it aloud to you. Take note of where stumbles occur or where things sound awkward. Those are the problem areas you need to fix.
I think you'll find that, when having this poem read aloud, it feels more mechanical than natural, and that is due to the abruptness of the line breaks and the resulting shortness of the lines.