Analysis of "Let It Enfold You"

In his poem “Let It Enfold You,” Charles Bukowski describes his process of growing from a young bitter, hateful, pessimistic, philandering, destructive, and argumentative man to a older, almost pleasant, loving husband, and dumbed-down version of his former self, to argue that there is no lost cause.
He starts off describing how he grows up and describes how he sees himself. "I was hard as granite, I leered at the sun." When he uses this simile he describes how tough, streetwise, and mean he is. He wants you to see him, to visualize him, and even wants you to feel something. Charles goes on to try and have you understand that not only is he hard but he is unstable and most likely a little crazy, "in and out of my mind." He lists things that he hates and describes why for the most part, like when he states "and flowers were for pansies." He insists on degrading everything, he has an opinion about everything and it’s not a good one.
Just as he finishes bashing the "peace and happiness," he is struck by the realization that the individualist he thinks he is has come to a halt when he wrote “that I wasn't different / I was the same." I believe that when the poet states "the lie was the weapon and the plot was empty, darkness was the dictator," he realized the "lie" that he thinks is his individuality has now become the "weapon". The plot is his life, everything that he thought, felt, hated, and used, something he worked so hard at and for, was now gone "empty." Now the "darkness" is the general feeling he gets from everyone he has studied, those people are being ruled, ruled by a "dictator", and he was now becoming an anarchist for the other side.
"I could never accept life as it was, I could never gobble down all its poisons but there were parts, tenuous magic parts open for the asking." Struggling, he is starting to struggle and convince himself that there is more to life, however small "but there were parts, tenuous magic parts" that make him realize that he did not have to "accept life was it was," and that all he hated wasn't all "poison" that he didn’t have to "gobble down".
Beauty, now that is not a word that I thought he would be used to describe something or anything for that matter and mean it, but he has "the mouse on my dresser / its eyes looked at me and they were beautiful." Those lines in his poem struck me, because I feel it is the first time he recognizes beauty as beauty.
Although he is changing, he is still struggling with himself, like when he takes "shots of peace, tattered shards of happiness. I embraced that stuff like the hottest number, like high heels, breasts." Even though his description leans towards the optimistic side of life, he throws in a few, almost vulgar similes just to let you know he hasn't fully converted.
There comes a point in his life that while experiencing "good moments" he looks into a mirror and sees himself in a new light a light that he has been fending off for so long. He sees himself as "almost handsome, better at least than some of those movie star faces like the cheek's of a baby's butt." This is when I believe he found his wife or soon afterwards, because he seems to be confident in his appearance for the first time. It’s funny to me that he writes that “finally I discovered real feelings of others,” as he is about to talk about his wife but not before he tells us he is going to the track.
His wife, I didn't expect this but wasn't surprised either when reading it. This has to be the epitome of his life, the way he writes about her while she is sleeping "ached for her life, just being there under the covers." This tells me that he has found love but, never does he mention love throughout this poem. He describes his exit from his home and into the "marvelous car," and the feeling he gets while in it. He drives away "I saw the mailman, honked, he waved back at me." Can you imagine him honking at someone for a positive reason at the beginning of this poem? I can see him honking but not to get a reaction but, certainly not a positive one. This to me is just mind altering. I can't get over him actually thinking of honking at the mailman so he could receive some kind of positive feedback, he sought it out. That to me was the perfect ending to the poem.