Charles Bukowski — You Cant Make a Lion out of a Butterfly Live

you can't make a lion out of a butterfly he was built naturally big and he was strong he was just born into it, with oversized curls that fell over his forehead he even had an english accent and he was pretty if you didn't look to close all he lacked was soul and fire he'd never been hungry he'd never been lonely he'd never been anything but big and strong with oversized curls and we worked him up the heavyweight ladder against misfits with glass chins and he was 26-0 when we put him in against the fifth-rank contender a black butterball who'd been in prison twice once for rape once for burglary, a coke head and our boy bobby, he looked good in the first round he had a six-inch reach on butterball he had youth, size, strength, perfectly trained but butterball came out in the second and started landing shots from the outfield our boy covered up like a girl backed against the ropes, hid under his arms and in the third round it was the same and in the fourth, butterball got to his chin and our boy bobby fell down, right off, took the count and he got right up at eleven none of us could talk to him in the dressing room he sat on the edge of the table and said, "i'm going to take up acting," butterball had told me, right after the fight "that guy couldn't race half a hard-on in a high class whorehouse," "go take your shower bobby," somebody in the room said when he walked into the shower room, we looked at each other there were three or four of us "well shit," somebody said and that's what it was