Charles Bukowski - Poems by Charles, Pt. 1 lyrics

At the end of feat, the blackbird walks
Shocked by palisades of ice
And worn out shoes shocked by nerve gas
Shock by pinnacles of spinach
Shock by the broken-wing bluebird

Ol' Notre Dame football teams
Run through my room
Sands whirl inside stovepipes
Never getting a Pulitzer prize
Shakespeare is 401, Joe Lewis is 51
A young boy stands outside throwing dust
Dry rocks against the garage
"thap! thap! thap!"
Shocked by the body's limpid
Drag disease flab
Shocked by tourniquets of music and elevators
Not shocked to learn that
Beethoven was a drunkard
The angular daydream huddles against the
Fence like an old man
"Jesus Charlie" it says
"Jesus Charlie they surely got us now" Hm
Then, night fear
Fear of never sleeping with a young
Girl who'd never heard of Rimbaud
Fear of platitude and poverty
Fear of a long death
Fear of cameras and landlords and bosses
Fear of children and wives
Fear of cancer and round shoulders
Fear that Sartre's asleep
Fear that is kidding
Fear that there isn't anybody here

In a dozen years
I'll be grey and almost dead
In a dozen years I will be dead
At the end of of feat the blackbird walks
The woman behind me dries her
Pants on the heater
China and Russia curse at the bar
France sit's back holding a
Small blade in pocket
I wish I were truly gross not this way
The way people say I am
I wish I were truly gross, weighed 366 pounds
And sat at a back table in Paris
Six novels behind me
About ready to die and waiting
Eating something out of a pot
A one half-lived rabbit
Regarding the women as soot
The world is soot
Knowing the ground will bring up
Potatoes, coal, old graves, Diamonds
Knowing a joke about the sun and partly
About what god is up to
Sitting there, in accumulation
Spooning it down
Glowing pink and famed and not
Caring under electric lights
And I, with only a temporary will
All the waitresses frightened
Trembling in their silly flower panties
All the young boys wanting to
Know how it's done, What the equation is:
And I am, after all, truly gross
I get up and walk out, electric into darkness
And cracked my cane head against the building
(Bang) "THAP!" and that is it-
Two jet planes passed to left now
I see a white and yellow roof
Through a dead walnut tree
The shock is in seeing and
Feeling and never knowing
It is a knowing that makes you gross
There's nothing to know