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 ma**age 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 pa**ing; 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 d**h: 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.