Talking Heads Poem by David Lewis Paget

They said it was only climate change,
It would take a hundred years
To raise the temperature one degree,
It was easy to reverse,
But the weather pattern was changing
We could see that for ourselves,
And the strangest things were happening
But it only came in spells.

Torrential rain in the dryest state,
And flooding over the plain,
Blazing heat in the winter like
We'll never see again,
The Ozone Layer had opened up
With the use of C.F.C's,
And the burn effect of the sun increased,
Was causing more disease.

I told Joanne she should cover up
When she sunbathed at the beach,
You can lead a horse to water
But there's some you just can't teach,
She cooked herself to a golden brown
And the burn began to tell,
As the melanomas began to form
In her fragile, human cells.

She had a couple cut out, but then
Some more began to form,
But still she went to the nudist beach
When the sun came up at dawn,
‘I want to look brown and healthy
Not a pastey white, like some, '
And shook her head at the zinc cream
And the protection I put on.

The level of radiation was
Increasing with U.V.,
And even the whales in Summer Bay
Got cancers in the sea,
I warned and warned but she tossed her head,
In that stubborn way she had,
I braced myself for the future, for
I knew, it would be bad.

It started off as a scaley lump
On her shoulder, then it grew,
Faster than anything I've seen,
An inch, in a day or two,
I told her to get to the hospital
But she said, ‘I'll use some cream.'
We little knew what was coming through
It seemed like a nightmare scene.

She sat in the sun again next day,
I said, ‘You're tempting the fates!
Go and have it cut out, Joanne,
Before it gets too late.'
But the clouds rolled up and the sun went in
It was sultry still, not cool,
Then the lightning flashed around our place
And struck, in our garden pool.

It ran along our verandah rail
And it lit up Joanne's chair,
While static electricity
Was crackling in the air,
Her hair stood out like a golliwog
Then her skin began to glow,
And that must have been the moment when
The thing began to grow.

The scab fell off in the morning
Leaving a hole, both red and raw,
And later, when she was screaming,
How to describe the thing I saw?
She stood in front of the mirror with
Her eyes so full of dread,
For up and out of the open wound
Had popped a tiny head.

The tiny head of a pygmy thing
That glared, with razor teeth,
With evil, glittering, crimson eyes
It was just beyond belief,
And then it started to babble in
A strange high, whining tone,
The only words I could understand:
‘You'd better leave me alone! '

Joanne collapsed on the bathroom floor
She had gone out like a light,
And I went straight for the cabinet door,
I was petrified with fright,
I pulled out the cut-throat razor and
I sliced it off at the neck,
But not before it had bitten me
As I dropped it on the deck.

I'm writing this final message so
The rest of you will know,
You're going to have to cremate us
To destroy this so-and-so,
Joanne has five, and is terrified
While I have only three,
But we've sliced off more than a dozen heads
So far, God pity me!

15 January 2015