Charles Bukowski - One for the shoeshine man (Live) lyrics

One for the shoeshine man

The balance is preserved by snails
Climbing the Santa Monica cliffs
The luck is walking down Western Avenue
And having the girls in the massage
Parlor holler at you, "Hello Sweetie!"
The miracle is having five women
In love with you, At the age of fifty-five
And the goodness that you're only able
To love one of them
The gift is having a doctor
More gentle than you are
His laughter is finer than yours
The peace comes from driving a blue
Sixty-seven Volks through the streets
Like a teenager
Radio tuned to the host who loves you most
Feeling the sun
Feeling the solid hum of the rebuilt motor
As you needle through traffic
The grace is being able to
Like rock music, symphony music, Jazz
Anything that contains the original
Energy of joy
And the probability that returns
Is a deep-blue low
Yourself flat upon yourself within
The guillotine walls
Angry at the sound of the phone
Or anybody's footsteps passing
But the other probability, the wilting high
That always follows
Makes the girl at the check stand
In the supermarket look like Marilyn
Like Jackie
Before they got her Harvard lover
Like the girl in high school
That we all followed home
There is that which helps you believe
In something else besides death
Somebody in a car
Approaching on a street too narrow
And he, or she, pulls aside to let you by
Or the old fighter
Beau Jack's shining shoes
After blowing the entire bankroll
On Hardee's, on women, On parasites
Humming, breathing on the leather
Working the rag, looking up and saying
"What the hell i had it for a while
That beats the other i am bitter sometimes
But the taste has often been sweet"
It's only like I cared to say it
It's like when your woman says
"Tell me you love me" and you can't

If you see me grinning from my
Blue volks, running a yellow light
Driving straight into the sun
I will be locked into the
Arms of a crazy life
Thinking of trapeze artists and
Midgets with big cigars
Of a poetry reading in Hamburg
Of with his bag of Polish soil
An old waitress bringing an extra cup of
Coffee and laughing as she does so
The best of you are like more than you think
The others don't count except
That they have fingers
And heads, and some of them eyes
And most of them legs
And all of them good and bad
Dreams and a way to go
Justice is everywhere and it's working, and
The machine guns, and the frogs
And the hedges will tell you so