Dead as Dillinger

by John Rocco

John Dillinger is the Sun God
in my mythology even though
I couldn’t rent PUBLIC ENEMIES
because my sorry ass credit card
was denied by all the Banker Angels
shaking their heads, “Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk”
they say the tight-ass blessed motherfuckers
about all the money I dropped in strip clubs
from New York to Baltimore’s the Block
to bloody killer lover Vegas but what the fuck
I was young and old and dying loving and they
were beautiful young women sitting on my lap and more
and once I was biting licking this girl’s ear and I felt
something metal fall into my mouth and it almost
went down my throat. I choked it up and gave the
earring back to her. I almost swallowed it.

Dillinger once escaped from jail
with a wooden gun he carved from
a bucket and colored with shoe polish.
He used to case banks by pretending
to be a bank alarm salesman and once
his gang pretended to be a film crew
filming a “bank robbery” that actually was real.


The FBI shot Dillinger
Public Enemy #1
as he came out of a movie theater
after seeing a gangster movie starring
Clark Gable
with the Lady in the Red
who betrayed him. The cops had trouble
keeping back the crowd who dipped their
handkerchiefs in his blood.

They say
Dillinger had a really big dick and they kept
it in the Smithsonian for awhile before
it was stolen from the Walter Reade
Army Medical Museum.

That’s why he’s my Sun God.
Dillinger robbed dozens of banks and
two police stations for guns and bullet-proof vests.
The FBI was invented to catch him.
He had a big dick and they kept it as a museum piece.

He died as he lived:
for crime and the movies.
Dead as Dillinger
how I think about us now
how you’re gone to me
girl
like Dillinger’s blood
stained stiff on the old cold museum handkerchiefs.