2015.5 Dawn

This is not my first all-nighter, 
and it won’t be my last by 
any stretch of the imagination, 
consciousness grating on 
flayed nerves, 
bursts of radio static 
in unconsidered colours, 
twenty-seven and already 
deeply familiar with severed realities.

It is, however, my first
by National Express
(though not my last)
as I’m passed from pillar to post,
mostly through the ghost towns
of the ancient coach stops
dotted across the bleary landscape
I am starting to call… not home,
not yet, but a beacon to
my bruised heart,
choosing this quest to sain me.
Sain Us.

I am trying to stay awake in
the grey, migraine strip-lit
flicker that is Luton airport,
20… 20… 2002? 2003?
resting, restless, on slippery surfaces
designed for anything but
relaxation, consuming sugar
against the drooping eyelids
that might see me miss
my destination.

I am reading a book, slim-yet-dense,
never guessing its part in
consuming obsession ahead of me,
and yet the Now-Me can’t remember
if it was Volume I or II.
I’m convinced it was I, yet the
crackling synapses of that dreamtime
bridge the distance, flip the pages of
the man solo save for a stray boy
straight into the beached doorways
drifting between times
five years later.

And, let’s face it, I made that
cash-saving escapade more times
since than I can easily reckon,
the beckoning of Milton Keynes
summoning me from the safety
of Wales, a controlled skid into
a different way of existing,
resisting silent pleas for
the belief that I could be more,
twice four-score miles
from childhood seasons,
bilingualism, hills, and sea.

We’ll never know –
I walked through the door willingly,
fleeing pain and… me,
and found a different verse,
some words worse, but others new,
knew myself for poet,
preacher, teacher, larger, kinder,
reaching different peaks,
but losing song, and, dragons fading,
I strode on, alone, into the Wastelands.

So, this comes from the Day 5 prompt and, as some folk have also reported, I never followed through on the actual prompt, but got sucked into the image that accompanied it, which reminded me of a book some of you might have recognised from the fleeting description – The Drawing of the Three, by Stephen King. Except that the memory it summoned up in me was of a crazed all-nighter when I was reading the altogether different first book, The Gunslinger, so you get to experience a shred of my mildly synaesthetic, sleep deprived confusion.

I mean, to be fair, I did find this image on the Google Image search originally!