The Crunch (first version) by Charles Bukowski (read by Tom O'Bedlam)

This is the original version of The Crunch. There were three versions in all. Here's a discussion about the changing text of The Crunch
http://bukowskiforum.com/threads/the-...
and all three versions side by side here:
http://bukowski.net/poems/crunches.php

It's offensive and it means to be offensive. I left out two lines that are too offensive for most people. Bukowski himself took them out of later versions - but for the sake of completeness:

"many old women rubbing rosaries
when they'd prefer to be rubbing cocks"

Here's Charles Bukowski reading it:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x20i...

Here's Bono reading it:
   • The Crunch: Bono read a charles bukow...  

The stills for contemporary atmosphere are from two movies of the same year.
Taxi Driver with Robert De Niro and Jodie Foster.
Marathon Man with Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier

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

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.