| Logger Days, savannah, the menagerie packed its trains
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| left Bitter Root, Montana for those old Nebraska plains
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| Ticket sales were suffering now, with half the animals gone
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| but the circus kept its course somehow and the show continued on
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| Pitched their tents in Battle Creek on a makeshift flatbed stage
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| with a draytop shotgun rhino’s peak and a black wrought iron cage
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| The barker sprung to action as the band began to play
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| to introduce the new attraction who they’d picked up on the way
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| Julian the Onion who they’d picked up on the way
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| «Cleanse your minds and palates, as I seldom mince my words,
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| This poor boy’s a walking shallot; |
| yes, it’s shocking as you’ve heard!
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| From his lonesome, yellow childhood, so fantastically deformed,
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| He was battered by his classmates and sauteed like bantam corn
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| 'Red Vidalias!' |
| 'Valley Sweets!' |
| for twelve long, rotten years
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| if he so much as skinned his knee, the entire schoolhouse moved to tears
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| We found him where he’d sprouted, plotting a garden coup d’etat
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| in a carrot stick and celery stalk manage-a-mirepoix
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| Now, feast your caramel eyes on the most savory sight in town!»
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| All his joking well-evoking peals of laughter from the crowd
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| But Julian the Onion was not laughing with the crowd
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| His jaundiced face was trembling, beads of sweat began to fall
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| Down his oblong gooseback forehead to his snuffed-out lantern jaw
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| his cut-shoot sprig of hair disheveled, tiny fists impearled
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| «No I am not this misshaped body, and I’m not long for this world
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| Wooden dimes and quiet fears, come curl your lips at me
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| but all perceptions are as mirrors, it’s your own reflections that you see
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| So hide behind your laughs a while, look handsome though you may,
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| oh, do enjoy that saccharine smile, as there comes for you a day» |