To Happiness,

Happiness, you swooped like a buzzard,
snitched her keg of skin and bones
and pinched between a laughing beak,
a dead rag doll. A hook, a heist,
and in a swipe, soaring upwards
to perch on the branch of a tree.

Ripped and shaken like a giggle
She is moved
to a chuckle, a chortle,
a crow.

Your curled beak cup digs deep
and she is captured
meat.

You are observed
feeding, filching a cop
of meaningless,
beaming – or that is her,
exhilarated;
she marvels as you cheat her
of misery
because surely you feel nothing;
functioning.

.