My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist

And toasted to Edith Piaf and the fall of the Reich
She weeds the tobacco, he offends the nation

And they write, "Don't be a stranger, y'hear, sincerely, your sister"
So my parents had me to the disgust of the prostitutes
To start up a punk rock band in South Carolina

To a blind brigadier in a game of high stakes Canasta
He was disguised as a Russian cadet in the employ of the Axis
And there in the half-light , the provincial midnight
But he made me a sailor on his brigadier ship fleet
'Til the money got tight and they bet me away
Who'd deserted his ranks to follow his dream
Well, I get letters sometimes they bought the plantation
Left for the cattle but later was found by a communist
Bred in a brothel, surprisingly raised with tender care
To a lone concertina, they drank in cantinas

And she met my father at a fete in Aix-en-Provence
I know every yardarm from main mast to jib sheet

But sometimes I long to be landlocked
My sister was born in a hovel in Burgundy