Satan's Gumbo

By Dean Borok

I saw my darling in the moonlight
Her face gloriously lit in the starry night
As she floated floated floated down Exchange Place
In the dead still summer heat

Far away I heard the screaming
And the shooting and the cursing
As the raging mob descended
Dancin’ round the hangin’ tree

Does it warm your heart’s compassion
Madly throbbing voodoo drums
Beating loud inside the city
When the Day of Judgment comes?

Who will live and who will die?
Does it pay to question why?
Dead souls cowering in fear
Voodoo rhythms in the air

Take a million tons of water
Add a million forelorn souls
Sprinkle in some black gunpowder
Crumble in some levee walls
Now you’ve got the devil’s gumbo
Tell me, friend, how does it taste
Rich bouquet of death and waste

Can you hear the voodoo drums?
The mad crying and the screams?
Bodies floating in the water
Zombies rising from the graveyard
Evil spirits wild dancing
On the corpse of New Orleans

Ghoulish fiends from hell ascended
Sticking pins in nasty dolls
Paralyze the people’s leaders
As the deadly gumbo bubbles
Breeding filthy plague and anthrax
Rotting flesh and putrid maggots
As the gumbo boils over
Satan’s minions lick their chops
Let’s all sit down to the banquet
Feast upon the devil’s madness
While we await our turn in the pot