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