Every time we went to his barber supply shop,
he’d ruffle my hair
and say, “hi kid, how ya doin'?”
He knew my father from Sicily.
They went to the same school together,
but after the war, my father became a barber,
and he became a mobster.
He was friendly with dad,
like childhood friends often are.
They’d joke in dialect and laugh.

It wasn’t until later
that I learned who he was,
his businesses were fronts
for covers and covers for fronts.
Anyway, what did I care. I was a kid.

And that was the rub.
Under the RICO Act
I was “guilty by association.”

At ten I turned myself in,
but I never snitched,
and I’m still serving time
in the garden of good and evil.