Summer drizzlewave odyssey

Cut-up sunrays: Paddington. Sniffing familiar handrail rubber scent in with fast-sweating, moving bodies, it’s the universal aroma of travel, of being transported. Wearing a generic Johnsmile there I am. Floating imperceptibly as I hunt down the trains to actualise my latest escape, another bid to outrun my feelings. There you are, Graig, here you are, Graig, a text message formed in reality. My brittle past’s memories being squeezed laser-skinny. YMC… what’s the missing letter. Eternal drizzle sprinkled as tinsel, in this midsummer town centre grotto. Me asking for the pathetic fallacy and getting it amid the leaden mountain valleys. Two sausage, chips, two eggs, beans lake. But no bread. Moody looming. White-noise carriageway radio overrides the smartphone small-talk. From the carcass of half-memories, snippets of pleasantness. Pram-cobble rattling. Grass-perfumed, strolling the stalls so casually. Low clouds partition the distances. Tidy burgers. From within the fragments of the déjà vus I pluck out even smaller sand-particle joys whose sparkle had been event-blackened. Tiny people all morose by the runaway train, trees shuddering. Heady emotions torched. Pepsi burps. Run-down allotment allure, evening fires burning. Ashy teatime. Me crawling among the nettles picking out courgettes. Bee imprisoned head-close in polytunnel. The restless memories restoked. My silhouette Saturday lethargic. The earthy tang sheeting my Irish-grey fingers. Ashy pullover. Still the drizzle takes over the air. It is the air. Father Ted episode-like singer-songwriter-comedians. Welsh cake generosity and the constant spectre of sun. Clean Bandit 12-inch relentless violin version background anthem. Good-feeling dust. I miss those emotions, the ones I lament as if they have evaporated forever. When I am with you there’s no place I’d rather. Regret swimming. I re-analyse each conversion forensically. Marks and Spencer shop-space shell. What would I be if I wasn’t this? Early Bedwas. Was just nestling into sleep when hunted by the dream-mare. ‘John Mark, c’mere.’ Fragmented multi-camera-angle fickledawn MasterChef laughter. Shower-coffee sweltering. I need to forgive before I can be the former version of myself again. Left alone to perv on the community-hall adolescent dancers the solitude feelings grow more acute. ‘John Maher, you need constant refuelling don’t you?’ Pizza was nice, especially the black olives. ‘Isn’t that right, Tony?’ Face mashed into the chocolate finger melt-puddle, Thomas stuns the guardians. I can be the best at anything, crows Audley, hiding the cheese. Small rain residue illuminated by vehicle lights like graffiti on the summertime windowpanes. All these dads are too bulky and too American. The apparition of sun looms tantalising, its invisible presence constantly reaffirmed. Crave being that whole version. We’re a thousand miles from. Close to the toy-town, stoic hillside soldier-pylons marshall the fields. This tube’s so fucking boiling, it’s not just close it’s on me. History is bits of the future retold in a slightly different structure. Deckchair delinquents. Perfecting our heroic grins. Lucy runs for car doors, I outpace her, hide behind trees. Exalted in the scene. Rickards Street was a happy era, I miss that era, it was just me and Hannah. They use this platform now I love refurbished train stations. The moment when I board the Arriva wagon. Snaking through the cutting I zone out. All images tiny but incessant. Encroaching park-goers lost in their phones to Pokémon like a cult. I’m thinking if I can forgive myself then I can forgive her too. We staked out on a mission. Drunkenly stumbling back to the cottage holding the turned-up full moon in our hands: a twinkling five-pence piece. It was so cold. That youthful-dubstep Skream! CD. But I can’t do anything ‘til then, I’m chained. Whenever I come down you place in my hands a freshly dried stapled-together printout for my future reading. I wish I had means to send for you. Summer-holiday abandon. Glint-ghosts frost Taff-wind. Clwb Y Bont humidity carpark tarmac fumes. I snuggle into the outlines of safe feelings even if the wholeness of them remains foggy. What a shit coup. Lusty outside-pub secondhand-light moments cling to me. To find our inner peace. I bask in my woe with Lovecraft hyperbole. Our winter platform-monitor portraits cube-printed. Rather be. Stepping back onto Paddington the delayed heat hits me like a frying pan. And suddenly, there was Andi Peters.

© Copyright 2017 John Maher