Dillinger Redux

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John Dillinger, stretched out on your marble slab
in the Cook County Morgue, can you hear me?
My friend, it is time for you to wake up now.
Time for you to shake it all off like a bad dream.
Time for you to light out and make a break for it.

While the tourists and gawkers and thrill-seekers
dip their handkerchiefs in your blood, while
the coroner tilts your head so the photographers
can get a better angle – it is time for you to grab up
your straw skimmer, and grin that crooked grin,
and get the hell out of that place. It is time, John.

The Feds murdered you seventy-five years ago.
There was no indictment, no trial, no self-defense.
They shot you down like a dog. But now it is time
for you to jump right up, straighten your tie,
and head for the road again. Because we need you.

Why did they kill you? Because you made J. Edgar Hoover
look like a monkey’s uncle? He was that from the beginning.
Because you robbed banks? But the banks closed their doors
in ’30 and ’31, and millions of working people
lost their life’s savings. Did that matter? And where
did all that money go? Seventy-five years later, the Feds
are robbing the people all over again, to fatten up the banks
who started it all. We need you as an equalizer, John.

Were you a bad man? A criminal? Was Bernie Madoff
a bad man? Was Carlo Ponzi? Was Michael Milken?
What was your take, John, compared with their swindles?
And this time around, how many banks helped the boodlers
line their own pockets?
                                          Oh Johnny, they can make a thriller
with you wielding a tommy-gun, hanging from a getaway car,
they can make your life look glamorous, but in the end
it all comes down to dollars and cents. To who gets what.
And who covers it up. That’s why they killed you, John.
That’s what they don’t want anybody to know, even now.