Morbus Poems | Examples

Two Things You Don'T Want

Two things you don't want		9.1.15

If I appeared slightly under the weather
     or if he just wanted a little fun, 	
my dad would ask if I had
     the cholerie morbus*.
If not that
     maybe the heebie jeebies.

Neither sounded like 
     a real ailment.	
I thought he'd conjured up	
     the maladies – "Oh, Daddy."

Do you suppose he knew?

Had he read that President Zachary Taylor 
     died suddenly of cholera morbus in 1850.

Maybe he picked the term 'heebie jeebies'
     from the 1926 Louis Armstrong song of the same title.

We'll never know.
     After he asked I felt better
He made my little bouts brief.	

I think my dad, the finest of men,
     simply enjoyed the sound of 'cholerie morbus'
and 'heebie jeebies'.
     He loved to gently tease and was full of good humor.


*My dad always said "cholerie morbus", not "cholera morbus", which is "acute gastroenteritis occurring in summer and autumn and marked by severe cramps, diarrhea, and vomiting. No longer in scientific use." Sounds too awful for him to have known what it was.