Charles Bukowski - The Sun Wields Mercy lyrics

And the sun wields mercy
But like a jet torch carried to high
And the jets whip across it's sight
And rockets leap like toads
And the boys get out the maps
And pin-cushion the moon, Old green cheese
No life there but too much on earth:
Our unwashed India boys
Crossing their legs, playing pipes
Starving with sucked in bellies
Watching the snakes volute
Like beautiful women in the hungry air
The rockets leap
The rockets leap like hares
Clearing clump and dog
Replacing out dated bullets
The Chinese still carve
In jade, quietly stuffing rice
Into their hunger, a hunger
A thousand years old
Their muddy rivers moving with fire
And song, barges, houseboats
Pushed by drifting poles
Of waiting without wanting
In Turkey they face the East
On their carpets praying to a purple god
Who smokes and laughs
And sticks fingers in their eyes
Blinding them, as gods will do
But the rockets are ready:
Peace is no longer
For some reason, precious
Madness drifts like lily pads
On a pond circling senselessly
The painters paint dipping
Their reds and greens and yellows
Poets rhyme their loneliness
Musicians starve as always
And the novelists miss the mark
But not the pelican, the gull
Pelicans dip and dive, rise
Shaking shocked half-dead
Radioactive fish from their beaks
Indeed, indeed, the waters wash
The rocks with slime and on wall st
The market staggers like a lost drunk
Looking for his key ah
This will be a good one, by God:
It will take us back to the
Sabre-teeth, the winged monkey
Scrabbling in pit's over bit's
Of helmet, instrument and glass
A lightning crashes across
The window and in a million rooms
Lovers lie entwined and lost
And sick as peace
The sky still breaks red and orange for the
Painters-and for the lovers
Flowers open as they always have
Opened but covered with thin dust
Of rocket fuel and mushrooms
Poison mushrooms it's a bad time
A dog-sick time-curtain
Act 3, standing room only
SOLD OUT, SOLD OUT, SOLD OUT again
By god, by somebody and something
By rockets and generals and
Leaders, by poets, doctors, comedians
By manufacturers of soup
And biscuit's, Janus-faced hucksters
Of their own indexterity
I can now see now the coal-slick
Contaminated fields, a snail or 2
Bile, obsidian, a fish or 3
In the shallows, an obloquy of our
Source and our sight
Has this happened before? is history
A circle that catches it'self by the tail
A dream, a nightmare
A general's dream, a presidents dream
A dictators dream can't we awaken?
Or are the forces of life
Greater than we are?
Can't we awaken? must we forever
Dear friends, die in our sleep?