Dutch Schultz's Last Words

"A boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim."
Perils of Prosperity: 1914-1932
Wm.Leuchtenburg, p.270. 

I'd always had
A feel for rhythm.
That's why
I couldn't keep
My hands off
Six shooters and
Thompson machine guns,
The crack and
The rata tat-tat,
Always loved
When things scanned well,
Loved, too,
Those fuckin flappers
Hopping around
The speakeasies,
Their stockings knotted
At the knees,
The way the smokes
Clung to their lips,
The faces they made…
I just couldn't get
The logic of passwords,
As if they were
Not my kind of joke,
Couldn't figure how
Words alone could
Open doors, be aimed
And then hit someone,
Figured they just
Floated up to the sky.                      
That's why
I was a killer
And not a savior.
But not
Just a killer.
I was a killer
Because I loved slapstick,
The illicit flicker
And brew of lights,
Stuck together
That make cartoons
At the picture show.
I was a killer,
Like somebody born
Color blind,
Who can't know
What color means
Yet feels warm and cool,
Somebody born
Tone deaf
Who feels his own heart,
Knows his own lyrics,
But who'd never know
Another song even
If he heard one.

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C Perricone has had poems published in literary magazines, as well as 2 volumes of poetry: A Summer of Monkey Poems, Cummington Press, Omaha, 1996, and Footnotes, Boatwhistle Books, London, 2018.He is also the author of "Playing Catch," which appeared in All Along the Fence, Gibraltar Editions, 2016, and a portfolio celebrating the centenary of the birth of Harry Duncan, a distinguished art book printer/publisher. He earned a PhD in philosophy from The City Univ. of NY, Graduate Center and has had philosophy articles and reviews published in professional philosophy journals.