Ab Absurdo

image taken from bing

Ab Absurdo

“Let us not forget that authentic power is in service.

Only those who serve with love are able to protect.”

--Pope Francis I

Those of us who’ve never actually been to Italy,

still seem to think we know a lot about it, probably

from watching olive oil commercials, or our

exposure to Catholicism, Michelangelo, De Vinci

and/or the Roman Empire, holy & otherwise, from

Caligula to Mussolini, from Spartacus & the Servile

Wars to pedophile priests with their boy harems;

from that first wondrous bite of pizza, oh yeah,

from the tower of Pisa to the power of Pizza,

even though I have read/heard that authentic

pizza is mostly just crust & sauce, which seems

silly, and authentic lasagna has no meat, which

seems to be sacrilege. 

from one of my best college memories, prompting

me to become a History minor, when a dynamic

professor taught lessons on the unification of

Italy by the Zapata-like leader Guiseppe Garibaldi,

and how ironic it was to see that the proud well-

trained Roman legionnaires degenerated into

the pitiful ineffective clown-soldiers of WWII; 

from the fact that there have been 266 holy fathers

in the Catholic Church, from the Borgia pope,

Alexander VI to our latest, the controversial

Argentinean, Francis I, who just six months

into his papacy has already stirred up the

ecclesiastical pot by clearly speaking his mind

on the world’s financial woes, gays, celibacy,

pedophilia, immigration, contraception, chemical

weapons, women priests, & church corruption--

you go, Pope Daddy;

and of course from Italian Cinema, neo-realism,

Italy through the eyes, lenses, & hearts of Fellini,

De Sica, Antonioni, & Leone as we experienced

both the joy of flying without planes in our dreams

to the ecstasy of enjoying the earthiness of

Loren, Lollobrigida, & Magnani; 

learning  to say a capite ad callem--from 

the head to the heel, being able to see on maps

that Italy is shaped like a great boot kicking

the butt of Sicily, the largest island in the

Mediterranean, that the island of Sardinia

is mostly majestic mountains that have risen

out of the sea, that Italy is a land of mountains,

the Alps, Dolomites, & Appenines;

that the lovely names of Italy’s greatest cities

roll off our tongue effortlessly--Rome, Milan,

Naples, Genoa, & Venice--ah yes, Venice,

which most recently, thanks to CNN, we can

relate to even more now as we are informed

that the oceans of the earth are rising, & there is

proof that New Orleans will partially be under

water in 20 years, which makes me wonder

just how filthy will the new American canals be,

and if New Orleans becomes the new Venice,

will the new gondoliers be Cajun or Creole?

Glenn Buttkus

October 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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