Unswathed by ends I begin to drink in

My desperate strolls past beer-battered bums

Whose outcast hands, blackened with grime, match mine

Which likewise are black with ink from the news

That isn’t news when life gets old, and beer

Is all that’s left to drink in from it.

The rhythm of the rain beats out of time

With the sounds from the speakers glued always

To ears — I rip them off like unhealed scabs

And the bloody cadence of the world hurts

But still I listen as it wipes away

The black news from my callused fingertips.

Theirs are callused too as they play guitar

And are reminded of how far they are

From me and those for whom the rain will wash

Predictably the darkest days away;

Their darkness, here to stay, soils the hands

That their borderline hope makes beg again.

And no one hears them singing out of tune

As the downpour floods the park where they sleep

And I return the buds to my changed ears

And return myself to unchanging days

While they wind the clocks of their world forward

Till they come upon another midnight.