Brutal City Rhythms

Mike Kalmbach

 

They awake each day with the dawn

The drummers

Five

Their blankets, the stars, torn away

They rise

Seeking to reach the streets before the first crowds

It is their life

They are the drummers

Pounding out brutal city rhythms

Beating an overturned trashcan

Or bucket

Raw emotion channeled through their hands

Or sticks, or pieces of rope

They are the drummers

And it is their life

Pounding out a living

Maybe making enough to not die

But never enough to live

Everyday they create these

Brutal city rhythms

Beating, not drums

But their own coffins

And the sticks

Are bones from their own arms

Euphemism Campus Box 4240 Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-4240