Don't forget what circus day means to a small town Children of all ages Your attention please Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah The circus caught on fire And all the children cried The smoky veils like fairy tales That every parent and their parent lie to kids about But as the flames clicked the sky, my hometown died a little more Well, let's roast some weenies, jumpy said But he was just crackin' wise I smelled the smoke and I smelled the dead And I watched the dragonflies dive at the tiger shed They circled us like scavengers overhead What will the juggler do, the night is so lonely She never learned to read or write in school Charred costumes in fumes on the ground Music man's head hangin' down The fire consumes his piano like a hungry jewel Thalidomide boy's not weeping The bearded lady sheds her skin They bite the hand that feeds them We might be laughing, but they're smackin' the clowns Well, the circus caught on fire The canvas cavin' in The big top like an elephant whose bones Could not support the skin And the faceless miss, the working class, broke down and cried a little more Well, me and jumpy were kids We'd never learn No money, no tickets, so whenever their backs were turned We'd dive down, dive belly down Cut and cross, safe on that sawdust floor Disaster's unflattering plight, stark faces, starless sight The beauty of the night has disappeared Wrinkled with mileage, racked with the sores No time for the makeup man, the famished fire roars The line between illusion is scarred and smeared Sideshow pinhead blows his whistle The two-headed dog breaks down the bars They attack the puppet master We might be laughing, but they're smackin' the clowns And now In all of the confusion, I felt selfish and bitter We all have to grow up, but why her, why now These fearless performers, now just pitiful people Afraid and ashamed and all asking how But maybe the old cliché isn't far from the truth Maybe there's a silver lining Maybe the old cliché isn't far from true Maybe there's a, a silver lining Maybe the circus lives on inside us Your attention please And now The circus caught on fire The animals raising hell Scratching and clawing their way to freedom A matter of killed or be killed And the rest of the world was standin' still but starting to slide a little more I went to clown college And jumpy went to Nam He wrote me a letter before he got wasted, he caught that napalm bomb Now I put on my white face and I sing my silly song But the good times have come and gone Sometimes I remember that town, I still see it burning Before they built this booze-bottle parking lot Whatever happened to that traveling show It took something out of me, nobody knows And left me with my memories, that's all I've got Thalidomide boy's not weeping The bearded lady sheds her skin They bite the hand that feeds them We might be laughing, but they're smackin' the clowns Children of all ages