Ivan Head: Four Poems

Hindu Blue

In the beginning

God said

The colour green

Will remind them of me.

 

Then said

Blue will do too.

But having thought a lot

About grey

 

Also said OK.

Ivan Head

 

Memory Siding: Cookernup 6220

It was Cookernup Siding

Where the Bunbury Belle stopped on request.

I stood there and watched the horizon point

Where the tracks appeared to merge

Though we knew they never touched.

I wanted to see the train

Emerge from that point of telescopic unity

A train dot appearing from a point.

Much later we pondered the philosopher’s

Round tower that appeared square from a distance.

I did see the Ex Nihilo Express

Appear this side of Harvey,

Enlarging until it stopped big as real life;

Then back to Perth Central with our holiday cases.

That diesel still arrives unasked.

It’s hardwired into memory siding.

A child also knew that

When a steam train passed the dairy farm at speed in Winter

The white steam plume runs horizontally

Back over the wagons.

We kept holiday logs

That recorded the number of carriages or trucks.

Some ran empty to Collie

Some back with coal or freight.

We knew what a bogie was.

The aluminium refinery may now shut the town.

Ivan Head

Eugene, Eugenides, Eugenic

World War III by A. Drone

I’ve invented a Ray-gun

That’ll kill every hu-man.

With just a bleep

It devours any street

With just a Burp

City and Burb

I don’t need a strategy

It turns itself On

I don’t need Ethics

It’s a Meta-Gun.

The War will be short

It’s already won

Forget about ISIS

Forget Taliban

Forget the Cold War

Forget Chairman Mao

My Meta-Gun’s on

And I’m the good Guy.

It identifies them and they can all go fry.

Ivan Head

First Day of School

The boy I sat next to

Argued with me about

The contents of his pencil case.

He pulled out something and said “Look at my Crown”.

I told him it was a Crayon.

We fought over that until Milk Time.

There was a Milk Monitor.

The crate should not be left in the Sun.

The Ink Monitor had gone the year before.

He had left circular holes in old hardwood desks

And even in the modern lightwoods.

We all had Bics and Pencils

But still had to Rule Up.

There were no calculators and

We began to chant Mental Math.

Shoes were not compulsory.

In sandy Perth

The place of birth

I lived up the Mulberry Tree.

My feet were scarlet with their fruit

Indelible in any Bath.

The teacher who was prim

Was aghast.

I ran barefoot past

The Coke Machine

And got micro slivers of glass in my feet.

I limped for weeks

Until Dr Barr my pal’s father

Scalpeled it one night.

We were told on walking home

Never to accept a ride and to watch for the bogeyman with his sack

We ran in terror one day

From a man

Who no doubt was a bona fide

Gardener with a hessian bag.

That Summer afternoon

We queued at the water troughs in the yard

One boy sucked at the tap to make us wait.

By fate the Council turned off the Water Main as he drank

And we all stood thirsty and chagrined until

Hardwired as Lord of the Flies the chant went up—

“You drank the taps dry, You drank the taps dry, You drank the taps dry.”

He fled before we beat him to a pulp.

I believed it true that he drank the taps dry;

I believed it for the full two minutes of the chanting Cry

Until I thought of the deep water I had seen

At Canning Dam up in the hills, that baptismal reservoir

Of immense proportion.

There was the boy after home-time bell

Who threw boondies at us

from across the walk home road.

He threw well.

I can still see one stone grow larger and larger

Until it struck me just above the eye

And blood and Yell were all.

Ivan Head