The Familiar - A Trattoria in Modena

Ludovico Muratori, you bastard
- five years of torture many have suffered
in your name, misused and abused -
both your inordinate historiographical
bacchanalia and your unwavering faith in accruing
the redundant find pleasurable abandon in the
museum of intellectual cramps and
Italian – too Italian – that
these four restaurant walls are.

I do not know if you might really speak
of buon gusto or perfect Italian poetry; after
all it took us centuries to reach spiritual
advancements such as too much cream in our
tortellini, too much grease in our ragu', too many
picky children for too desperate yet caring parents
seating by the corner under that ugly, ugly pink goat.

Still, you would surely cherish, though perhaps
not applaud, the good hands – rubberband laden -
in which you left your future children, evenly
divided between those who struggle to fill the plate,
and those who fight to empty it.

(Another quick one from Robin Behn's - was supposed to mimick a Ginsberg poem. Orly?)