Gary McCormick: 'What the drummer said to the drum'

Photo / Mark Mitchell

Entertainer Gary McCormick has penned a poem about the Christchurch earthquake, after being thrown off his feet when it struck last Tuesday.

McCormick was standing outside the More FM building when the 6.3 magnitude quake struck hit and says he realised the seriousness of it immediately.

"My poem really is about anger, because I'm still really cross about the whole thing," he said.

"I'm cross at no-one in particular, I'm sort of cross at how these things happened.

"So I did write something. Over the last couple of days when I picked myself off the ground in Christchurch the other day and looked around and saw the absolute pandemonium and the misery and destruction."

What the drummer said to the drum

You miserable low life bastard.

We saw you on the fourth of September calling into town on your spineless spine, giving us a flick and looking us over.

It was an earthquake then for the yellow pages. Remember the torch, the bottles of water.

In September you were just the piano player, tinkling the ivories. In moustache. Pretty out there. Eyeing the women on the dancefloor.

Then my o my you waited!

I saw you the other day run up a blind alley full of hatred and dark breath. Black clouds only pity us.

You held us down on the jagged ground. You shook the streets and the city buildings. You tore the spire from the cathedral.

And all those people.

The tourists taking photographs, the babies taken in pairs, the hikers in the hills.

The ones buried beneath us still.

You miserable bastard of a thing!

The time has come.

Said the drummer to the drum.

When I can make no sense of it.