Random Acts of Poetry

Misfortune Cookie

If you've read Agatha Christie,
You know murders can be elegant things,
If accomplished with the right kind of poison,
Not with guns, or garotting strings.

One can find the substances needed,
Growing right at home in the garden.
Or perhaps, in the gardener’s shed
There is something to control the vermin.

But one doesn’t expect to be felled,
By a craving for dessert.
Or to find one’s fate written,
Like a warning or alert.

Yet in the broken cookie,
Instead of some tidbit of wisdom,
Was a label describing the toxin
Of which I was now the victim.

Caution! the label read,
Toxic to humans and pets.
(My dog died years ago
But I’ve no time to digress).

My fortune was most unfortunate
A hard fact for me to digest.


Prize Prompt:
The thing you’d find most ominous if it were inside a fortune cookie.