Piker Press — Weekly Journal of Arts and Literature
July 13, 2026

Do You Have Cooks or Crooks Out There?

"...crooks are in the habit and business of nourishing, serving and spoiling themselves..."

Do You Have Cooks or Crooks Out There?

When those who’re supposed to be cooks
are in fact avid crooks, awful are the looks!
The state doesn’t augur well for the famished
because crooks are in the habit and business
of nourishing, serving and spoiling themselves.
That’s what they are good at and fixated with.

They’re caught with dirty hands in the cookie jar.
Do they care? Fortification is their inspiration.
You know they’re doing something forbidden.
It reminds you of the story of a stealth monkey
whose hands got jammed in a jar of nice little nuts
because it insatiably rejected to let go of the handful
to pull its hand back out. Only now that’s not fictional.

Cooks feel for their clients, crude crooks don’t.
They ignore the youth who succumb to hunger.
They hardly plant seeds of love, obligation,
fertility and prosperity. Souls who trustingly
or dimly cheer them, celebrate famishment.
A seed of greed scorns sharing, parity and health.
It delights in deceit, discrimination and dominance.

Crooks don’t seem to eat their fill in spite
of the excess they consume and cash.
They don’t feel the heat in the kitchen.
They feel the longing to cook and crook
more and more for the rest of their lives.
They feel entitled, distinct and ordained
to aid no one else but their bellies and bags.

When crooks are cooks, thieving outdoes
culinary, their sticky fingers are in the pot!
Kleptomaniac appetites and performances
are normalized, gastronomic output is ignored.

They scarcely feel the heat in the kitchen.
They feel comfort and control, fatty returns
and care they have for their kin and cronies.
They will do all to guard their looted dishes.

A familiar family affair, an inner circle feast.
Hunger and starvation outside the kitchen,
they don’t feel, for they assist themselves.
When crooks are cooks, there’s no fulfilment.
It’s a recipe for foolery, frustration and famine.







More by Ndaba Sibanda → More poetry → Full issue →
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