George Drew: Drumming Armageddon

I, too, have friends dead from drugs,
guys I hung out with on my hometown streets
and in the war memorial park with wood railings
we kept falling off, too stoned to balance on.
 
There was Zak, the lumberjack-looking redhead
who was dumb and because he was dumb
an unwitting victim of fun: He dosed on smack,
thinking he could take it, but it taking him;
 
and Allen, a doper of the first order who
made it into early middle age, then
did himself in with mixtures of booze and crack,
his body rotting behind the butcher shop;
 
then there was Herbie, sweetly temperate Herbie
who dreamed of being a ferocious drummer
and high on Ginger Baker riffs and weed,
gigged out on the front end of an 18-wheeler.
 
There are others, but when I hear a car or truck
backfire, when I hear raindrops on a roof
or distant rolls of thunder, when I hear
the neighbor's boy drumming night into dawn,
 
it's Zak and Allen I think of, and Herbie,
Herbie twirling his sticks high over his head,
then ripping into classic Cream, Ginger
at his side, drumming Armageddon into exile.

Copyright 2021 George Drew

George Drew’s many books include Drumming Armageddon (Madville, 2020).