Julian The Onion

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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, Julian
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Julian the Onion who they'd picked up on the way


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[BARKER:] "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, Julian
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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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[JULIAN:] "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"