An experimental African-Chaucerian doggerel dub

 

Mojo bag, black cat bone,

my gris-gris ain’t working

on her heart of stone.

 

Adamantine-hard,

cold as Iceland steel,

it know how to beat

but not how to feel.

 

So I went to see the hoodoo man

down at the shaman shack.

begging for some conjuration

to launch me a love attack.

 

A week’s pay he took from me

and handed me a sachet sac.

He claim it reversal be so strong

it could turn Strom Thurmond black.

 

The very next day when the sun uprose

and I was moaning in bed,

she slid a note beneath my door,

and this is what it said:

 

“I done slap a ‘straining order

on your obsessive ass.

I’m sick and tired, fool,

of this never-ending harass.

 

“Get yo ass to the record store

and check out the Marvelettes.

I wouldn’t be your lover, baby,

if you owned 76 Corvettes.

 

“Listen to that song they sing,

‘Too Many Fish in the Sea.’

Cast yo line in another pond

And for Christ’s sake, let me be.”

 

I cry: O, what yo gonna do, mama,

when yo problems get like mine?

Take a mouth full of sugar,

drink a bottle of turpentine.

 

Mojo bag, black cat bone,

my gris-gris ain’t working

on her heart of stone.