Arthur Flegenheimer was better known as Dutch Schultz, a notorious bootlegger and mobster of the 1920-30 era. While he was a vicious and ruthless gangster, his biggest mark on the world came from his last words — a mad stream-of-consciousness rant which lasted for hours. They have inspired speculation and scholarship, and been the subject (directly or indirectly) of many literary endeavors, including a bizarre mock screenplay by William S Burroughs.

Dutch Schultz had converted to Roman Catholicism in the weeks prior to his murder. Is there any connection, then, with the glossolalia claimed by some Christian Pentecostal sects? It's a long way from a Holy Roller speaking in tongues to the pomp and ceremony of mass, but it is also a long way from the violence of organized crime to the poetry of "A boy has never wept...nor dashed a thousand kin." But perhaps it is all just chemical, and the peritonitis ravaging Dutch's bullet-torn frame had just shorted out his brain.

I find the same kind of incomprehensible poetry in the ravings I find in my inbox. Junk mail filters trap messages based on their content (Bayesian spam filtering)which judges the merit of a message based on the words it contains. To bypass this, some automatic mailers (spammer software) build unique messages from a database of phrases, usually clippings from literature or dictionaries. This use of Brion Gysin's cut-up technique can, on occasion, create something strangely beautiful.

injustice in centigrade when lysergic
not contract or prescript not thatch
But of what is he dying asked acidulous
Life is simply eyesight out replied the reporter choral
Perhaps he is telling
jessie the demon it's isocline
when polymorph it's aforethought

Which leads me to wonder about this strange convergence of criminal intent and unintentional art. Is there some force driving this use of poetry to advance criminal activity? Could it be that Arthur Flegenheimer lives on, leading a spectral syndicate operation? Is Dutch Schultz the ghost in the machine?