And the last of these traceable to that same general area,
one of my boyhood heroes--
he wasn't a hero, he was just famous on our block.
It was a peculiar block as I look back on it now.
Perhaps that's true of where everybody grew up.
But one of the boys I used to play with on my block
was the unsuccessful assassin of Castro
in the early days of the revolution.
Remember the American Naval pilot who didn't make it,
who got caught.
And others have wound up in reform schools and all places.
I don't have to tell a sophisticated audience
like this--
I don't suppose who John Dillinger was certainly
not at the time the revival of Bonnie
and Clyde and the whole time.
He-- Dillinger there was the man who practically singlehandedly
invented the FBI by devising a method of Interstate Bank
robbery that made state police departments nearly obsolete.
Well all I can say about this poem
is that everything in it that sounds
as though it might possibly be a fact, is a fact.
Aside from the more outlandish metaphor simile its all true.
It's called 'The shooting of John Dillinger
outside the Biograph Theater July 22 1934.
Chicago ran a fever of 101 on that groggy
Sunday, a reporter fried an egg on a sidewalk,
the air looked shaky.
And 100,000 people were in the lake like shirts in a laundry.
Why was Johnny lonely?
Not because two dozen solid citizens heat-struck and keeled
over backwards.
Not because those lawful souls had fallen out of their sockets
and melted, but because the sun went down
like a lump in a furnace or a bull in the stockyard.
Where was Johnny headed?
Under the Biograph Theater sign that said,
'our air is refrigerated.
Have 17 FBI men and four policemen who
stood in doorways and sweated.
Johnny sat down on a cold seat to watch
Clark Gable get electrocuted.
Johnny been mistreated?
Yes, but Gable told the D.A. He'd rather fry than
be shut up forever.
Two women sat by Johnny.
One looked sweet, one looked like J Edgar Hoover.
Polly Hamilton made him feel hot,
but Anna Sage made him shiver.
Was Johnny a good lover?
Yes, but he passed out his share of squeezes
and pokes like a jittery masher, while Agent Purvis sneaked
up and down the aisle like an usher trying to make sure
they wouldn't slip out till the show was over.
Was Johnny of four-flusher?
No not if he knew the game.
He got it up or got it back.
But do you like to take snapshots of policemen
with his own Kodak and once in a while,
he'd like to take them with an automatic.
Why was Johnny frantic?
Because he couldn't take a walk or sit down on a movie
without being afraid he'd run smack
into somebody who'd pointed his rearranged face and holler,
'Johnny!
Was Johnny ugly?
Yes, because Dr. Wilhelm Loeser had given him
a new profile with a baggy jawline
and squint eyes and an embrace dimple
with kangaroo tendons cheekbones and a gigolos mustache,
that should have been illegal.
Did Johnny love a girl?
Yes, a good looking, hard-headed Indian named Billie Frechette.
He wanted to marry her and lie down and try to get over,
but that she was locked in jail for giving him
first aid and comfort.
Did Johnny feel hurt?
He felt like breaking a bank or jumping over a railing
into some panicky teller's cage to shout,
'reach for the ceiling' or like kicking some vice
President in the bum checks and smiling.
What was he really doing?
Going up the aisle with the crowd and into the lobby
with Polly saying, 'would you do it Clark done?
And Johnny saying, 'Maybe' and Anna saying,
'if he'd been smart he'd have acted like Bing Crosby'
Did Johnny look classy?
Yes, white on white shirt and tie luminous.
His trousers were like knives to the tops of his shoes,
and his yellow straw hat came down to his dark glasses.
Was Johnny suspicious?
Yes, and when agent Purvis signaled
with a trembling cigar, Johnny ducked
left and ran out of the theater.
An innocent Polly and squealing Anna were left nowhere.
Was Johnny a fast runner?
No, but he crouched and scurried past a friendly liquor store
under the coupled arms of double-daters, under awnings,
under stars.
The curb at the mouth of an alley.
He haunched there.
Was Johnny a thinker?
No, but he was thinking more or less of Billie Frechette, who
was lost in prison for longer than he could possibly wait,
and then it was probably too hard to think around a bullet.
Did anyone shoot straight?
Yes, but Mrs. Etta Natalsky fell out
from under her picture hats.
Theresa Paulus sprawled on the sidewalk clutching
her left foot, and both of them groaned loud and long
under the streetlight.
Johnny like that?
No, but he lay down with those strange women, his face
in the alley, one shoe off, cinders in his mouth,
his eyelids heavy.
When they shouted questions at him, he talked back to nobody.
Did Johnny lie easy? yes, Holding his gun
and holding his breath of the last trick,
he waited, when the agents came close,
his breath wouldn't work.
Clark Gable walked his last mile, Johnny ran half a block.
Did he run out of luck?
Yes, before he was cool, they had him spread out
on dished-in marble.
In the Cook County morgue surrounded
by babbling people with a crime reporter
presiding over the head of the table.
Johnny have a soul?
Yes, and it was climbing his slippery windpipe
like a burglar.
It was beating the inside of his rib cage
hollering, 'let me out of here' maybe it got out
and maybe it just stayed there.
Was Johnny a moneymaker?
Yes and thousands paid $0.25 to see him, mostly women,
and one said 'I wouldn't have come,
except these a moral lesson.
And another, 'I'm disappointed.
He feels like a dead man'
Did Johnny have a brain?
Yes and it always worked best through the worst of dangers,
through flat- footed hammerlock, through guarded doors,
around corners, but it got taken out in the morgue
and sold to some doctors.
Could Johnny take orders?
No, but he stayed in the wicker basket, carried by 6 men
through the bulging crowd to the hearse
and let himself be locked in, and he
stayed put as it went driving South in a driving rain.
And he didn't get stolen?
No, not even after his old hard nosed dad
refused to sell the quick drawing for $10,000
to somebody in a carnival.
He figured he'd let Johnny decide how to get the hell.
Did anyone wish him well?
Yes, half of Indiana camped in the family's pasture,
and the minister said, 'with luck,
he could have been a minister' and up the sleeve
of his oversized gray suit, Johnny twitched the finger.
Does anyone remember?
Everyone still alive, and some dead ones.
It was a new holiday with hot and cold drinks,
and hot and cold tears, they planted him in the cemetery
with three Unknown vice presidents, Benjamin Harrison
and James Whitcomb Riley.
Who never held up anybody.