9) Boca Sovacos

¡Boca Sovacos, Boca Sovacos,
There but for the Grace of God and Science goes
Boca Sovacos, Boca Sovacos,
Bringing his voodoo to a theater near you
Is he.

Boca Sovacos unlocks his zippered teeth,
Releasing a plume of
Hot Garbage 'n'
Bossa Nova.

Harps of slaver escape from his lips
His dreams start but stammer,
His rhythm, it slips,
The bandstand, she's a lonely place for old

¡Boca Sovacos, Boca Sovacos,
Drummer from a sideways time and space is poor
Boca Sovacos, Boca Sovacos,
Pied piper for an old, amphibious race is he!

His eyes, a blank-but-obstinate stare
Through cataracts and matted hair
Had looked upon the tangle there
Of Bottles, Cans 'n' Chains.
It was a Makeshift-Sort-Of
Formaheap
Percussion set on which he'd keep
A pulse for all mere mortals to disdain.

His eyes, a blank-but-obstinate stare
Still fixed upon some point somewhere
Beyond pedestrian affairs
And the All-To-Real Mundane,
For he saw, through the din and dross,
A way to get his point across,
Though what it was, he must've lost
In the tangle of his brain.

¡The beat, oh, it festers!
¡The tune, how it spoils!
Despite all he's weathered and how he still toils
No beast still attatched to its thin mortal coil
Could follow his refrain.
So with a club-foot, hunch-back shuffle he makes
His awkward, inefficient way
Behind the geometric fray
Of abovesaid Bottles, Cans 'n' Chains
And aforementioned
Tangled Brains.

¡Boca Sovacos, Boca Sovacos!
There but for the Grace of God and Science goes
Boca Sovacos, Boca Sovacos,
Drummer from a sideways Time and Space
And of an undead, Subterranean race
¡Yes!
Boca Sovacos
Adjusting his sock-o's
Warming-up for "the Seventh" in
Purgatory's bullpen is
¡Boca Sovacos:
BOKOR of Rock-os!
On a Crusade to raise a band of the Undead
Goes he.


He give a
RAP-TAP-TAP
On the drumheads,
¡Ay!
He got a
Book of Spells he can't
Pronounce too well,
He give uh...
¡Tighten those drumheads, ay!
He got some periodontal castanets uh-spittin'
Polyrhythmic epithets...

...He got a
HEIL TALKBOX in his gills
to help E-NUN-SEE-EY-SHAWN!

"¿You wanna be a
BOKOR?
"You gotta practice
som'more."
"¿You wanna, uh,
RAISE the DEAD?"
"Costs fifty pesos a head."
Put uh fiddle or a horn in each
Worm-riddled hand, said
"¡Ay, Senor Sovacos, you got yerself uh band",
Then give uh...


He got eyes like two plastic bags of fat,
'N' uh liver like uh slab of I-RON,
He got the swagger of a young Lon Cheney Sr.
'N' uh frilly shirt fit for Byron.
He wake the dead with a cowbell clamor,
'N' he move 'em with uh
Bone Marimba.
They shiver 'n' they shake to the
Racket he make, though they still aint
Exactly limbah,
oh, the man is

¡Boca Sovacos: Undercover Mariach-o!
Slipping in and out of rhythm and tune undetected goes
Boca Sovacos
With his Zombie Muchachos
Making music like panda bears
Falling down flights of stairs
Boca Sovacos
Eating human-skull tacos
'N' thumbing his nose at KURU infection, oh,
"¡Boca Sovacos, take
Bruce Villanche for the block-o!"

There but for the Grace of God and Science,
¡AY!
There but for the Curse of Bela Lugosi,
¡AY!
On the drunken tightrope of
HELL-AND-SUPERSTITION wobbles
¡BOCA SOVACOS!


©2007, 2010 Andy Klosenski

This title also appears on American Toreador [2007].