SWAMP WITCH [WORDS] Blackwater Hattie lived back in the swamp Where the strange green reptiles crawl Snakes hang thick from the cypress trees Like sausage on a smokehouse wall Swamp is alive with a thousand eyes And all of them watchin you Stay offa track to Hattie’s Shack In the back of the Black Bayou Way up the road from Hattie’s Shack Lies a sleepy little Okeechobee town Talk of swamp witch Hattie lock you in when the sun go down Rumours of what she’d done, rumours of what she’d do Kept folks offa track to Hattie’s shack In the back of the Black Bayou One day brought the rain and the rain stayed on And the swamp water overflowed Skeetahs and the fever grabbed the town like a fist Doctor Jackson was the first to go Some said the plague was brought by Hattie There was talk of a hangin too Talk got shackled by the howls and the cackles From the bowels of the Black Bayou Early one morn tween dark and dawn when shadows fill the sky There came an unseen caller on a town where hope run dry In the square there was found a big black round vat full of gurglin brew Whisperin sounds as folks gathered round “It came from the Black Bayou” Ain’t much pride when you’re trapped inside A slowly sinkin ship Scooped up the liquid deep and green And the whole town took a sip Fever went away and the very next day the skies again were blue Let’s thank old Hattie for saving our town We’ll fetch her from the Black Bayou Party ah ten of the town’s best men headed for Hattie’s shack Said Swamp Witch magic was useful and good And they’re gonna bring Hattie back Never found Hattie, and they never found the shack, And they never made a trip back in Parchment note they found tacked to a stump Said, “Don’t come lookin again. . .”

CADILLAC [WORDS] It’s an enormous Cadillac Got the blood-red, faux velvet interior smells of a better era White-walled tires (Cos we love them walls white) And a metallic blue exterior sparkles cut glass playin at being diamonds Pan over a crucifix hood ornament It’s 45, smug at the wheel cruisin the Nightmare Strip Cadillac gits, like, a mile to the gallon While 45 sucks back a big Bubba Burger Crankin recordings from the My Lai massacre Onna stereo system hip for ’83 45 licks greasy fingers, gnashes teeth Breaks out a bucket a hate in livin, breathin color Sprinkled with four flavors of fear The Caddy veers wildly, 45 rubberneckin the monochrome whores Down at the corner of Abject and Poverty— 45 gives em one of those patented, arrogant smiles A whole planet has come to know and loathe Lil black girl not where she should be (Afghanistan took her pops, junk took her moms) Flies into the street fleein a pack o rabid skinheads Predictable tho it may be, 45 creams the kid, Blood spatter givin the Cadillac A fucked up Pollock paint-job 45 pauses long enough to take a coupla bows, shake a coupla hands While the skinheads roll the corpse offa the Strip Then the Caddy peels out, Nothin but torched Korean convenience stores and bodies in its wake. . . After all, race riots & lynchings are as American as apple pie