The Hayfever Blues

by jeanne rené

 The Hay Fever Blues

Well I,
Get up outta bed,
Go straight tah the head,
My eyes are a itch’n,
And my nose is a twitch’n,
Man, it’s bewitch’n!
Cause I got . . . those hayfever bah - looze.
Lord so many ah - chooze.
I don’t know what tah dooze . . . ya see
Cause I got,
Cause I got . . . those . . . May fever,
Day fever. Say what fever?
Hay fever bah - looze.

Well I’m,
Up in front of the class,
Don’t give this teacher no sass!
My eyes are all leak’n,
My ears are ah tweek’n,
The tissues a seep’n . . . now . . .
Since I got these hayfever bah - looze.
Can ‘ford no tissue to looze
And I just don’t know what tah dooze,
Since I got,
Since I got . . . this scratch in my throat
Class, now don’t rock the boat!
Just let me emote. . . these hayfever blues.

Lordy, Lordy,

Well I,
Throw open my door,
Just can’t take no more,
Leave all that pollen behind
But, Lord, what do I find,
My man, he’s a itch’n . . .
And ain’t that his nose a twitch’n,
Guess we can’t be a fix’n
The sneeze’n and sniff’n . . . with these hayfever bah-looze,
We’re gonna die from all dem ah-chooze!
We don’t know what dah dooze . . .
Cause we got,
Cause we got . . . those May fever
Day fever. What you say fever?
Hay fever bah-looze.

Hey . . . Where you go’n with that box of tissue?
I may be your woman, but it ain’t all about that.
You come back here, now. You here me?

Now what I am I gonna dooze?
With these . . . with these. . .
Hay fever blues.

We're talk’n some serious ah-chooze here, baby! 

 

copyright jeanne rené 2004 

Thoughts of a Mother Weeping in Our Distance

by jeanne rené

photo jeanne rené

Monotonous rows walked.
Stench rising to shields of handkerchief,
she searches for the smell of perfumed soap
on his ash covered neck

I inhale, in gasps, the disbelief of a mother.

Plastic shrouds suggest dignity
to babies of a newborn holocaust,
forfeited in a combustion of hate.
Why?
Why this sight surreal taped to her scrapbook?
A woman searches with photographs enshrined
of eyes and lips kissed with love.

I know her.
I see with the eyes of a mother.

I walk in cosmic footsteps to her door,
beating my chest with the depths of her despair.
She will
make me deaf to explanations,
and let me hear only the pitch her wail.

Mother,
I place my hands beneath your child’s head,
and stay for an eternity
that never this sleeping face touch the barren earth.

Mother,
I take my cup to catch your thousand tears
and drink them for my morning tea
that I may suffer the taste of your bitterness.

I reason with the thoughts of a mother.
She dreams,
She lives from this day
always on the portal between life and death.
She is, as lost to this world,
as her child taken.
The hint of her child’s laughter,
the slight suggestion of a smile,
a perfect profile on a Sunday afternoon . . .
and she wanders in the shadows.

I pray in her name . . .
Witness her questions frozen for posterity
as she walks the line between rows of disbelief.
How do we not share
this mother’s world
in which love and hate are indefinable?

jeanne rené  9/04