Late Starter
Charles Bukowski

by the time I got good with things
other people were into
something else.
from the worst baseball player
I became the best,
unbelievably swift in the field,
tremendous power at the
plate
but by then the others were into
schooling, books, getting ready
for the future.
from a sissy i developed into
one of the best fighters
around
but by then
there was nobody left to fight.
the girls took me even longer.
by the time I became an expert lover
all of my compatriots were
either married
or disillusioned by the
chase.
all that was left for me were
the leftovers, the uglies,
the divorced, the mad, the
ladies of the
streets.

I always became the best
at things when those things
no longer counted:
football, high-speed driving,
drinking, gambling, clowning,
debating, bullshitting, going
to jail, going crazy, lifting
weights, shadow boxing with
fate.

but I was alone.


the others had become sedate,
had become responsible
citizens with children, jobs, mortgages,
life insurance and pet
dog.

the very things which terrorized
me.

I was the retarded child
still looking for more
childhood.
I still wanted to play but
there were no
playmates.

I bummed the country,
prowled the avenues,
the bars,
I found nothing, I
found nobody.
I searched the skid
rows
thinking that something
could be hiding
there.
I thought
wrong.

being a late starter
also makes you late for heaven
or hell,
you are always trying to
catch something,
some tangent, some
invisible thing,
it has to be there,
I can feel it there,
I can see it sometimes in the eyes
of a tired old waitress,
or the round spot on a pillow
where the cat has
slept.

it’s there and it beats the
funeral parlors
and the millions of feet
walking in their
shoes
and the way it seems to
be,
the cities, the faces, the
newspapers, the sidewalks,
the stop signs, the churches,
the flags and the
calendars, the whole
unholy act.

this childhood on the
hunt,
this late starter,
this slugger, this drunkard
is still on the look-out
and I know it’s there,
unfound,
waiting,
centuries late,
boiling,
swirling,
I’ve got the fix on
it,
it’s coming into
focus,
don’t you almost feel it
now?
I do.