Charles Bukowski — One for the Shoeshine Man Live

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