Wish

I wish for peace and happiness,
For safety's hug and hope's caress.
I wish for fast and full relief
From aches, abuse, and suffering.
I wish for strength and well-being,
To live in kindness that endures.
For grit and grace in times of grief,
Freedom that heals and love that cures.

Happiness

True happiness is shy.
You need to be gentle and soft,
sincere and kind,
because happiness can always tell
when people demand its presence
only for selfish pleasures,
and when they genuinely wish
to welcome happiness home,
and honor their dignified guest,
with care at home inside their heart.

Happiness is pure and simple,
requires only that you meet
its soft presence with yours.
Happiness will silently sit,
caress your arms that long
have held heaps of hurt within.
Happiness will sing,
perfume the glory of your being,
cool the treacherous loathing within
with every flap of each wing.

But only if you care enough
to invite happiness home.
So open your windows at night,
let this shy presence now glide in,
unseen by the glaring daylight.
Listen for the soothing sound
of it preening its feathers,
consistent as breathing,
or the calm regular beats
of peaceful open hearts.

Craving for Peace

Of late and when the world's asleep
I've got a strange craving for peace
And sleepwalk down so late at night
My fingers still groping for light
And if a plate inside that fridge
Oh even if it's just one piece
One taste of it could make me weep
It's scent would float as if a bridge
Above ripples beyond my sight 
To where no word can stand for spite
To where no fear or fight can creep
Nor crazed turbulence in the deep

My doctor calling me "addict"
Prescribed a diet very strict:
No peace at home even outside
No peace especially at night
But healthy dose of grim conflict
It's tough love for this peace addict

Centillion Ways to Die

Hospital, hospice, laid in bed,
On freezing streets, in fancy rooms.
In timeless spaces, sunless skies,
Cubicles, prison cells...and tombs. 
In front of judges, parents, kids,
Audience—friend or strange—their eyes
Still staring from behind the lids
That speak the feelings left unsaid. 
With prayers, with grating cries, with sighs.
Unseen, unknown; unloved, unwed....
By force or will, with guns.  In wombs
Of girls whose souls have parted too.
Kisses on cheeks and pale foreheads,
Holding of hands, and swallowed tears,
With lonely aches and greedy fears.
Mystery, grief...then peace one year,
as pain searches, with wings unspread,
for warm and kind suffering peers
to help release the inner dead.

Report of an Arrest

The state police report:
At one o'clock last night,  
a liquid gold sedan—
"a Mazda 3," they write, 
"an import," driven by
a man of black-and-white
complexion, suit and tie—
had come to park beside
a purple Firebird, right 
behind the fire temple,
on Ash across from Crown. 
And not that far from stairs,
and couple hydrants there.
Police became alarmed
at once because they saw
a sickly bandaged arm  
emerging from the car,
and wave—as if a star.
"Do not report," upset,
he said, "my life, oh please,
as though the world at large
considers me a threat!"
Arrested by police
right there and then, his charge:
Disturbing of the peace!