Charles Bukowski - One for the shoeshine man lyrics

The balance is preserved by
The snails climbing the santa Monica cliffs
The luck is in walking down Western Avenue
And having the girls in a massage
Parlour holler at you, "Hello Sweetie!"
The miracle is having 5 women in love
With you at the age of 55
And the goodness is that you are only able
To love one of them
The gift is having a daughter more gentle
Than you are, whose laughter is finer
Than yours the peace comes from driving a
Blue 1967 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 the 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 lilting high that always follows -
Makes the girl at the checkstand 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
Shining shoes
After blowing the entire bankroll on parties
On women on parasites
Humming, breathing on the leather
Working the rag looking up and saying:
"what the hell, I had it for
While that beats the other"
I am bitter sometimes
But the taste has often been
Sweet it's only that I've
Feared to say it it's like
When you 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 in the arms of a
Crazy life thinking of trapeze artists
Of midgets with big cigars
Of a Russian winter in the early 40's
Of Chopin with his bag of Polish soil
Of an old waitress bringing me an extra
Cup of coffee and laughing as she does so

The best of you i 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 way to go
Justice is everywhere and it's working
And the machine guns and frogs
And the hedges will tell you so