swear jargon

Sometime after I was born, I found myself working at a druggist's in Applesauce, Illinois
A girl came in one day and I thought she looked like the sun in the moon
She said she was named after a flower that was called Themubarabara
She bought a pound of licorice and a doorstop and told me that I ought to join the circus
After I left, I realized that she just wanted the upstairs room that I'd been renting

We traveled through the canyons and across the prairie
We took bottlecaps we'd found and linked them together with lengths of tumbleweed twine
To make shiny, aluminum vestments with which to reflect the bitter sun
And we dragged behind us long, black cloths to gather the ragged heat
So we could wrap ourselves in them at night to feast away the desert frost

There was the frontwagon, with the tent captain perched on top
Standing only tall as half-a-day but with the girth of a week
Like a penny on a halfdollar
He has a fine hat and he knows it
He smiles like a whale, fingering his watch fob and eying the brim

Next came the trim-truck, where the barker and his wife slept
On a stack of mattresses surrounded by piles of the smaller animals' cages
The barker's wife throws hardware and does real psychic readings for nickel tickets
She used to be a professional stabbist and has a lot on her mind
Her husband just shouts a lot

The fourthcarriage was filled with water and nothing else

Behind that was the quilted lady, standing by the front window-glass
She's peering out and thinking bitter thoughts
It's her buckboard that's supposed to trail the trim-truck
Not the damn water carriage
She clenches and unclenches her quilts and she fumes

Doctor Gompers was in the anvil-shaped brougham
He never talked to anyone in the train
But the barker's wife said that he's constantly doing liquid maths in his head
He's trying to make a topical salve to cure the bumbles
At least that's what he calls it, she said, in his head

Then there was the big animals' cart, it was enormous
It had nine wheels and was shaped like a scared H
Still, it wasn't big enough for all the animals to fit inside
So it was pulled by five lions and pushed by the elephant
And the smell was three times its size

I was in the next one, with you, getting messed up
We'd swiped one of the doc's tonics at the last stop
And we were mixing it with my bronchitis medicine
We swept up the sawdust in the towns and the branches in the forests
Right now, though, we were just laughing and laughing