A MILITARY DRUM, MY GRANDFATHER, PAUL SIMON, M PEOPLE & LILLA VARGEN...

Military Drum…

I shiver

As I sense the thoughts.

A search for the secrets I hide.

I see my hands

Rapping blood-stained goatskin,

Stretched tight across a red side-drum

With worn sticks of tapered English oak.

Smoke and fire

Form the mists

And I walk into the unknown,

A resting place for a lost being,

Beating my rhythm

To inspire others,

As I stride ahead,

Along an open-hearted path to nowhere…

Those drums,

Like in Paul Simon’s 

‘Obvious Child’

Or the ‘Smith and Mighty Mix’

Of M-People’s 

‘Search For A Hero’,

Pluck strings deep

‘Inside myself…

The key to my life.’

The percussion,

Like in Lilla Vargen’s

‘Why Wait’

Invigorate the inner thrill

And the mind weeps

And a tear seeps

And the emotions spill… 

Almost mystically,

My tapping fingers

Part the mists of the past

To reveal the motivation in me.

The clue,

The key…

“A drummer-boy at fifteen…”

My grandfather.

Boer War.

This rhythm is all I have.

Some follow it

And take from the spirit it holds.

Many despair of it,

Some dispel it…

Others decry,

Demean,

Detest

And destroy

The warmth it attempts 

To kindle

In the souls

Of aimless people,

Not unlike myself…

I have a feeling.

I ache in the telling of it. 

I wallow in the spirit of it.

Alone, I beat my drum

To find some healing…

Pete Ray

January 2020…

Emotion pours inside me when I hear battle-drums.

My grandfather joined the army as a drummer boy and his drum was actually shot through.

MATERNAL GRANDFATHER, HAVING JUST JOINED THE ARMY...

My mother recalled it being stored in the loft when she was a young girl.

AGAIN MY GRANDFATHER, WHO BECAME A REGIMENTAL SERGEANT MAJOR IN THE ROYAL WARWICKSHIRES...
(CENTRE, SEATED ON A CHAIR...)

I have recently obtained a drummer’s uniform badge, maybe from WW1 or the Boer War.

I have a military style drum in the house…

I find that the drums played in the three pieces of music mentioned above haunt me…