Counterfeit Gangster

Artwork by Nick Gentry

Counterfeit Gangster

“Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly

we pay for its counterfeit.”--Hosea Ballou

If one day, you wander into that hick cemetery

                                     in Cottondale, TX, you might stumble onto

                                     a small tombstone, ground level, simply

                  marked GEORGE B. KELLEY--1954;

            which was not me--hell, they even

misspelled my fake name.

I died at 54 in 1954, how about that for a fucking

cosmic coincidence?       I was born George Francis Barnes, Jr.

                                        I made a bit of a splash during Prohibition.

They called me Machine Gun Kelly,

because my weapon of choice            was a Thompson sub-machine gun;

but hell, I wasn’t really a hard case stone cold killer like

             some of them, you know--Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Lucky Luciano--

that whole fucked-up crowd.

I mean, I liked to work with my hands, & if my old man

hadn’t kicked my ass out of the house at 15, & if I hadn’t

had early successes as a bootlegger & leg-breaker, 

             I might have ended up as a garage mechanic.

I admit I turned into a bit of a flashy punk                in them early days

                                            just before the Depression, had a lot

                                  of run-ins with the bulls in Memphis;

                         they was a tough bunch of bastards, so

                anyway my girlfriend, Kathy, & I

lambed it to Tulsa, & got by

robbing a few farmer’s banks, but in 1928           I fucked up bad,

                & got caught smuggling booze into an Indian reservation--

those crazy Cherokees liked their fire water. 

I hate to admit it, but it was Kathy who was really the tough one in our

crime duo. She really took to the gangster life. She was the one who

coined my gangster handle; George R. Kelly. She planned all the little

chicken bank jobs, pushing for my notoriety, pushed for my meet with

Dillinger, talked me into getting hitched, chose the name Kelly since I was Irish. 

Shit, she was the one who bought me

my first chopper, 

                    a shiny new $225 Thompson

                       sub-machine gun, with three $5 

                       Type C drum magazines

                       that held 50 .45 ACP cartridges each.

Guys called the Thompson a lot of different names:

                    the Trench Sweeper (from its WWI roots),

                    the Chicago Typewriter, Organ Grinder, & Piano,

          but in any real shoot-out,

          you had to be careful not to blow

your wad too soon,

spraying fifty shells willy-nilly,

         had to learn how to squeeze off bursts, because

         it was tough & damn slow to change out the fucking drum,

& God help you if you had a jam. 

                          Yeah, I shot up a few guys,

                    most of them cops, but I don’t think

              I actually killed any one--but Miss Kathy

        took to wearing a Bonnie Parker beret

& she certainly plugged a lot more guys than I did.

but then in July 1933, we got greedy

       & kidnapped a fat cat oil tycoon named

               Charlie Urshel--& things just went sideways

                     from the get; fucking Charlie was crafty,

                              memorizing background noises, counting

                                          footsteps, putting his greasy fingerprints

                              on everything he could. So we ransomed him

                      for 200 thousand bucks, but

                our success was nothing but sham.        We had stashed

half the take at the Coleman Ranch in TX, 

old Earl was Kathy’s uncle.                          We were laying low over on

                                       Raynor Street in Memphis, & a swarm

                                       of them FBI pricks burst in while we was

                                       eating our ham & eggs. I was unarmed, so 

I panicked and yelled out, “Don’t shoot, G-Men!”

That stupid utterance came back to haunt me

all the rest of my days. 

                  Shit just went south & sideways; Kathy got pissed off

because the newspapers hardly even mentioned our arrest,

                  since that was the same damn day that the Dillinger

                  gang broke him out of the pen over at 

Michigan City, Indiana. 

                            Then they tracked down Uncle Earl,

                                      & napped our 73 grand out of his cotton patch--

                             & of course that little pompous faggot, J. Edgar

               fucking Hoover used my battered butt

for a springboard, glorifying the FBI.  They allowed

               , for the first time, film cameras into our trial,

                            & kidnapping, after the Lindbergh fiasco,

                became a federal crime; turns out that our case

was the first major crime solved by his newly formed

gang of FBI thugs, so

                Kathy & I both got life sentences out of the deal.

I lasted 21 years in the joint, starting off

at my alma mammy, Leavenworth, but then

I got lucky & got sent to the rock, Alcatraz; yeah, 

                so for 17 years I was inmate 117.       I let everyone know

from day one that I wasn’t no tough guy; made trustee after 

               doing a dime, pretty happy actually working in the shop

               making stuff for them to sell.

Then the assholes transferred me 

back to Leavenworth in 1951;                didn’t last long in that shit hole,

                                       bit the big one in 1954, sort of died

                                       of a broken heart.

Kathy, of course, outlived me; 

got out on her good behavior

while I was still on the Rock.            She was studying law

                                      when they shipped me back to Kansas. 

                          I am tickled as hell when I think of her

                     as a lawyer, always a tough lady, smart,

                a great piece of ass, born with

           fire in her belly.              I would have been nothing

                           without her; crazy bitch married a Sheriff

           & lived to be 90.

My final thoughts were of her, me

sitting on the crapper, smiling, straining,

just before my heart exploded. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over at dVerse Poets Poetics

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