Note: This is the original version of the crunch, published in Second Coming magazine in 1977. There are two other versions in Black Sparrow poetry collections, both quite different. Here is a page with all three versions side by side.

Appears (in an edited form) in Love is a Dog From Hell

Charles Bukowski

the crunch

Too much

too little

or not enough

too fat

too thin

or nobody

laughter or

tears

or immaculate

non-concern

haters

lovers

armies running through streets of blood

waving winebottles

bayoneting and fucking virgins

or an old guy in a cheap room

with a photograph of Marilyn Monroe

many old guys in cheap rooms without

any photographs at all

many old women rubbing rosaries

when they'd prefer to be rubbing cocks

there is a loneliness in this world so great

that you can see it in the slow movements of

the hands of a clock

there is a loneliness in this world so great

that you can see it blinking in neon signs

in Vegas, in Baltimore, in Munich

there are people so tired

so strafed

so mutilated by love or no

love

that buying a bargain can of tuna

in a supermarket

is their greatest moment

their greatest victory

we don't need new governments

new revolutions

we don't need new men

new women

we don't need new ways

wife-swaps

waterbeds

good Columbian

coke

water pipes

dildoes

rubbers with corkscrew stems

watches that give you the date

people are not good to each other

one on one.

Marx be damned

the sin is not the totality of certain systems.

Christianity be damned

the sin is not the killing of a God.

people are just not good to each other.

we are afraid

we think that hatred means strength

we think that New York City is the greatest

city in America.

what we need is less brilliance

what we need is less instruction

what we need are less poets

what we need are less Bukowskies

what we need are less Billy Grahams

what we need is more

beer

a typist

more finches

more green-eyed whores who don't eat your heart

like a vitamin pill

we don't think about the terror of one person

aching in one place

alone

untouched

unspoken to

watering a plant

being without a telephone that will never

ring

because there isn't one.

more haters than lovers

slices of doom like taffeta

people are not good to each other

people are not good to each other

people are not good to each other

and the beads swing and the clouds cloud

and the dogs piss upon the roses

and the killer beheads the child like taking a bite

out of an ice cream cone

and the ocean comes in and out

in and out

under the direction of a senseless moon

and people are not good to each other.

©Linda Lee Bukowski - used with permission