-proof of being-

The skins of Lupini beans cracked

Between our teeth

And the cheap Bohemian beer

Lingered sharply at the edges

Of our tongues from behind
The towering street-side billboards.

What separated the kids of the Park

From the sidewalk's wise-guys 

Who crossed the Billboards
To the doorway of the  raucous
Marconi Club,

(A few small steps for man)

Was the waiting rite of passage.

To become a grown-up

Takes a number of run-throughs;

The awkward

Movements of fingers in the pockets,
The bobbing heads,

The looking around nose-sniffing

And the occasional

Spit-squirt from between the two

Leading teeth.

“Whistle” DiCarlo was the younger

Brother to the fat DiCarlo Twins

Who smoked big cigars and walked

Bedford Street side by side

With an imposing girth running gate to gutter.

DiCarlo the younger, dealt jars of Lupini beans,
A local delicacy,

And quarts of Bohemian beer, a local nightmare,

From the Club to the wise-guys when the Twins

Were threatening the atmosphere someplace else.

We swigged through the bottle's lip, rubbing
The wet knob down
With the flaps of our our shirts
For the next guy's swig and smoked cigarettes

In the meadow behind the blind of the billboards
In the swiftness of our journey into manhood.

Some would say the Billboards are long gone.

Some would say the Marconi Club has altered
Its direction away from what it was meant to be.

Some might say that “Whistle” DiCarlo is dead,—

That his brothers no longer puff fat cigars

Swaggering side-by-side between the gutters and fences
As if they owned the street of the neighborhood
Where everyone else happened to live.—

But who among the living would dare say such things?

                                           Quequechan