Nicely done in structure. The only hiccup I had was that I normally hear "peculiar" as 4 syllables, where it needs 3 to fit the meter. Other than that, the rhymes, meter, and repetition all work great, and that's a tougher stress pattern to write in. I'm a little less clear on the meaning. The speaker definitely feels like his dedication to his work is less than that of the termites, though I don't know whether it's strictly a work ethic thing or if he finds their constructions artistically pleasing as well, more so than his own work.

A poem about inspiration and gratitude, and a little recursive in that it seems to reflect on its own creation. I think the image of a poet working in their house, while observing termites building their own house within that structure, is nested and anatomical. Then there is the abundance of the termites themselves, which are so prevalent that the speaker can't seem to avoid seeing them. With the declaration of guilt at the end, which might be ambiguously trustworthy, it all rings a little like something from Edgar Allen Poe.

What caugth my eye here were these four: parquet/cliché/soigné/blasé

I wanted to read them as french loanwords (rhyming with just each other) - they're spread so evenly throughout the poem that maybe, I thought, they're meant to break up the rhyme scheme for some intended effect. But I can't recognize or think of any effect that'd add to the poem.
So they're probably meant to be read with english pronounciation (rhyming with the ey/ay lines) I guess?

>>Pascoite
>>Heavy_Mole
>>Corinna

Thanks, folks!

As always, I have one word that throws the rhythm off because of ambiguous pronunciation. So "peculiar" will become "eccentric" before I start sending this one out to the poetry magazines. As for the French loanwords, once I had one in each of the first two stanzas, I realized that I needed one in all four, but yeah, they're supposed to rhyme with the other "ay" words.

As for whether the narrator's crazy or not, I'll leave that up to the reader. From the first word of the poem, he seems to think he's on the road to becoming an Edger Allan Poe character, but these artistic types, I've found, never seem to understand their own work... :)

Oh, and if anyone wants to hear me reading a little Hallowe'en rondeau I wrote maybe ten years ago, it's included in the 2024 SFPA Halloween Poetry Reading. The poem's called "Halloween Weather"--though I continue to insist that "Hallowe'en" needs that ' between the 'e's--and it's a little more than halfway down the page.

Mike