we forget the terror of one person
aching in one room
alone
unkissed
untouched
cut off
watering a plant alone
without a telephone that would never
ring
anyway.

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 obscure
and dogs piss upon rose bushes
the killer beheads the child like taking a bite
out of an ice cream cone
while the ocean comes in and goes out
in and out
in the thrall of a senseless moon.

and people are not good to each other.

— excerpt from Charles Bukowski’s “the crunch”

* There are multiple different versions of this poem in which the text varies.

Rogers Street Bridge Railing Shadow..  Photo credit: Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons