Barney Baker

He's big

Two-hundred-eighty-four pounds, they say

Big enough to be a strong-arm man on New York's docks

Big enough to be a prize fighter with cauliflower ears

Three-hundred and-twenty-five pounds, they say

Big enough to dope horses, to bounce folks into line

to pull down bleachers at a circus, killing three

Big enough to be a hash-house voluptuary

gorging on Teamster dough from Chicago to St. Louis

Four-hundred pounds, they say 

Big enough to receive a bright red Caddy convertible, 

Big enough to wear a top coat large as a tent

sweat from his shiny pomade hair wilts his white collar 

A blubbery man with one pudgy hand on his shotgun

Five hundred pounds, they say 

Big enough to toss a nonTeamster taxicab into Wichita's

Arkansas river, to execute dynamite bombings there

ex-con, stink-bomb tosser, underworld enforcer, scum of the earth

Why is he knocking on my daddy's office door?

Nonfiction Poetry

Academics define "nonfiction" as writing based on facts, real events, or real people. As a rule, authors write nonfiction as prose but it can be poetry.

I wrote "Barney Baker," above, as a nonfiction poem, based on a real man with known traits. I learned about him from various news stories, including Time.  

My prose version of Robert Bernard "Barney" Baker appears in That Punk Jimmy Hoffa! Coffey's Transfer at War with the Teamsters. Baker played a major role in that war.