They spent hours cooking the pasta
And putting it on expensive dishes
Then on shelves
Neighbourhood parents took plates down and ate
And every dish had a special defect
The tomato paste was too bitter
The creams were oversalted
As a rule the dining room was dim
Fussy parents tried to balance the plates in their hands
And see just what if any was the merit of the food
The tweeker's put their own music on
Music they had recorded with money they had stolen
Videoclips of popular tourist locations
One could ask how the hell did they put it all together
It was part of their one month clean declaration
The slow return to sincerity
Which was still racked with grandeur and euphoria
A temporary truth for some of them, most of them
And the next day one them would return to the meth and crack
The next day all the parents would suffer food poisoning