Restaurant where I am the Maître d’ and the Chef is my Unconscious

I put through an order for spaghetti aglio e olio.

He sends out a soup bowl full of blue emulsion.

A regular asks for lamb shank with rosemary.

Out comes a beetroot served with a corkscrew.

Someone I suspect of being a restaurant reviewer

orders the baked rum and chocolate pudding.

A mermaid rides a horse out of the kitchen.

He locks himself in there for days.

All I get are incoherent mumblings,

often in French. Some nights after closing time,

we sit down together with a glass or two,

get on famously, see eye-to-eye.

Next day he sits in a deck chair all through service,

wearing a paper hat and a tie-dyed surplice.

‘That’s it,’ I say, ‘I’m speaking to the owner.’

That night, he shakes me awake,

takes the lid off a serving dish:

an actual star he’s taken out of the sky

and put on a plate. I know it’s only a dream,

but next evening I’m bright and early at the restaurant,

shouting the orders, shaking the customers’ hands,

picking bits of gold out of my teeth.