"Chaz's Bronx Accent"

Listen. It’s almost the mid nineteen
nineties by now and I’ve never looked
so freaking old. Why? I work my face
to the teeth just to provide for you,
son, some such stability and education
that your mother won’t even look at
me anymore, not that I mind.

She looks bad at and to every last
man in the neighborhood except
me! Done with it, she’s yours “mother
-son.” I’m not your real, hard, working
dad, it’s true.
I’m only trying
to teach you how
not to run the neighborhood

girls all ragged, cheap dressing
on the corner, mouthing off
at me for not treating you
right, boy!

All these neighborhood
punk kid friends of yours
give you the business! Bad idea!

Bad ideal. That’s my business. Only
a dead-eyed moronic son of a treasonous
bitch played by me could get shot
in the back
of the head

right now, like this:
Feared.
Respected by those
with no honor (there is no “u”
in honor, son, don’t forget
what I tell you while me and
the boys are laying occasionally
mortal beat-downs on Hell’s
Angels, blacks, hispanic Jets
vs. Sharks types—all over
a parking spot! A woman’s
place in some other hard-
working scumbag’s honorless
home?

You know it now what the hell
did you do with my car? Some kind
of bull sh!t under the hood, huh?

Why?

Didn’t I always try to bribe you
for good luck and a pound of flesh,
your way?

Come here.
Come squeeze in right
through here, like I showed
you, just and right: like an open
saloon could be better than a
private confessional,
and scream NO) as I die

for all
criminal
sins in the
neighborhood
where neither of us
had a chance, really
to begin with, to
grow up.

Cabeesh? Yeah, no you
don’t. And you won’t when
you’re old,

either