That wren--
looking here, looking there.
You lose something?

I notice your
subtle plagiarisms

it could be a word I used once

or my angels leap from
my head onto your paper

you'll change the name of 'angel'
to "you",
meaning "I"

it's never too obvious

but I see my influence
I see my thievery mimicked beautifully

This is the fourth time it's happened this winter
The fire is sparking
("Put on another log to dull the flames")
The wind, whipping up chaos outside, conspires with the moon
to plaster open our eyes, and
tangoes with the red of the streetlight to foreground the terror, the dramatic pull to this scene like the beginning of a barfight.
But all you notice is the snow.

Captivating Slush, like the wondrous stupid glow of children's television
("Close the door quickly, it's below zero outside!")
My chest wakes up to the sleeky bitterness of it, gentle but rousing,
like the critique of a crush taunting the back of your neck, but in reverse.

You've said that last line, and it's the response of everyone who can't savor what they most anticipate, the arrival of the thing itself cast aside for something mundane like safety.
The thing itself for you is watching snow,
and now you gladly push it away.

Life is so unpredictable, yet so callously routine.
To live in seasons is to be constantly surprised at things exactly how you've seen them before.
It's not emotions that frighten us, emotions are hand-me downs, the old favourite band t-shirts of experience, often ones we've worn before.
It's the feelings that surround emotion that we shunt out, that we tipex over in our journals of memory, our synaptic splints.
The tears of children who never turn back
to confront their tormentor with their tears.

And so now I'm walking upstairs as a means of brushing off these notions
("For the love of ... make sure the bathroom window is closed")
And I check my phone while debating how to spend the rest of my evening engaging with my phone while you rewarch American sitcoms, so cosy, your contentment as reliable as Irish wind
Then I sigh and look out the Bauhaus insulting bedroom window
Again I see the circus coloured tarpit the weather has made of our street
And wait a minute, trying not to feel anything
Because this is the fourth time this has happened
This year.

the thing that holds me back
is
sensitivity

I'm too sensitive to light,
I can't stand outside in the sun
not for too long

like bright white hospital halls,
sickly, sterile strip lights

it's being hooked up
to the machine
that scans my brain
while a strobe light flares up
my epileptic heart

its car headlights
with their beams set to high
on tired pedestrian eyes

I keep my eyes shut tight
if I need to face the sun

the beams raining down on my
pale winter boy skin

it hurts to be out there
it hurts to look

I asked you who you were and what you like to do and you responded with a list of girls you want to ****

I asked what music you listen to and what TV shows you watch and you responded by telling me that the girl at the coffee store counter in the black coat with the dyed hair and dark blue lipstick probably had a tight *****

I asked you if you care that I think you're defined by the young girls whos names don't even matter to you as you drag them through the mud

I asked if you thought a woman is worth anything more than tight jeans and fully-made faces

I asked if you thought that a woman had something more to offer her legs and whats between them

and you told me to shut it with that feminist *******
and help you get that girls number etched into your bedpost

I don't write that kind of poetry
you know the type,
pretty flowing words that trickle down the page like a quaint little waterfall in a fancy garden
while daisies open themselves up with so much confidence
without any doubt

and I say something about myself without saying anything at all

the three dimensional poems that you could take a stroll through
and you can lay in the summer grass by the lake
you could get lost in the meaning

even though you're not so certain what the meaning is,
at least not for sure

no, I'm not so good at that

my words are more like...
running through the forest while it's dark and cold
because you want to get home and you're positive
you just heard something rustle in the dead leaves behind you

like telling your blaring warning signs to calm the **** down,
it's just an uneasy feeling

like telling the paranoiac to grow up and walk the **** pathway

it's shameful, annoying,
it's just some dumb feeling

no,
I don't write the sweet paintings kind of poem

I write my heart out into my notebook before I scribble it out and decide I had better not bother

my poems are regret-
regretting putting something good in my butchered understanding of art and words

every piece is the best I can do
and that's about it