Cookie

The bedroom air is perfumed
with the aroma of coffee
and freshly made bread.
A tall glass of orange juice
sits next to a closed window
that overlooks a garden.
Past the garden of dancing tulips
and blue hyacinths in bloom,
invisible from the house,
lies an empty lot,
that long ago belonged to a church
and once to a lottery retailer.
Here a halting ant,
having lost the way home
in search of food for hours
in the storm the previous night,
comes across an old ad
for Ant-Killer bug spray.
But a series of gusts
lifts the two of them,
the ant and its magic carpet,
and finally places them
next to the house where
inside someone is now baking
trays of cinnamon sugar butter
and chocolate vanilla pinwheel cookies.
The ant is flooded with scents.
The door is suddenly opened.
A child runs out laughing,
eating a cookie, a small piece
of which falls right next to the ant.
That's the way the cookie crumbles.
That's the way the cookie crumbles.

One-Man Restaurant

The nonstop clank and jingle of dishes,
some being washed, some breaking in the kitchen,
some exploding by chairs and drive us almost deaf.
The mathematics-professor-now-turned-chef,
burning the lamb, knocking over the kettle,
sweats buckets into today's special,
his nose wheezes like the whistle of a ref—
his soul longing to flee, possessed by the devil.
Turns waiter, serves, then talks to us of women, 
now sitting next to us, of being Christian,
of his youth in his homeland going fishing
for compliments from the ladies in his church,
and tears up and his lips quiver and says, Hell!
Gets up, hugs us, begs us to come back again.
We leave complaining to each other, but then
can't wait to go back there again and again.