his mother dances with him.
She puts on the record,
'Red Roses for a Blue Lady'
and throws him across the room.
Mind you,
she never laid a hand on him.
He gets red roses in different places,
the head, that time he was as sleepy as a river,
the back, that time he was a broken scarecrow,
the arm like a diamond had bitten it,
the leg, twisted like a licorice stick,
all the dance they did together,
Blue Lady and Tommy.
You fell, she said, just remember you fell.
I fell, is all he told the doctors
in the big hospital. A nice lady came
There is irony is the seeming sweetness of the relationship. The “Blue Lady” of the song is sad because of a “silly quarrel”, whhereas this Blue Lady is deeply disturbed. Furthermore, the noun “lady” suggests gentility, which is far from reality. Blue is the colour of depression, so we might speculate that the abuse she metes out to Tommy is the result of mental illness.
Red Roses