The ache
The tearing in my stomach
The yearning for something that isn't food
Not food for thought
But something that fills me up
Thick raindrops that sink beneath your skin and into your bones
Being soaked all the way through into your heart
Feeling that electricity that nobody else can spark
The weight of water on your face
Pricking your eyes
and running its way down your hair
All of it
All that love and mystery and deepness
that's being in love with being alive

Sure the stars are pretty
But
Look
At
The
Night.
The deep blackness of the never-ending pit that is sky
The entirety of its beauty
You expect the night to frame the stars delicately
But if I were the night sky
I'd swallow them whole

Give me a love for living
And I shall make myself whole
There will be no more more broken pieces
Only chips
Only cracks
But that does not make me any less whole
For a window that is cracked is still a window

Like a lake of glass,
or an endless, cloudless sky.
Calm is a virtue.

just look at THAT lonely glass of wine
today, THAT glass was assigned to the most wonderful someone
THAT someone has not arrived, as of this moment
who is THAT someone
is it yourself, are you, your someone
is it someone you don't know
how long must you wait
time moves at the pace of time
find, or be, THAT someone

Brian Hill - 2020 # 244

We are fish in an aquarium
Swimming all around
We live our lives in circles
Screaming to get out
We all are different colors
We all have different backgrounds
But this tank that we’re trapped in
Makes us all the same now

The manna that rains from heaven
Makes us fight like thieves
Some of us eat our children
Some of us starve in the street
The bigger fish are greedy
They never skip a meal
The little fish band together
And decide who they will ****

One day we will bite the hand that feeds us
When we get fed up with this life
We’re tired of being performers
For the master’s prying eye
We would rather starve than go on living  
this kind of lie
That if we keep on swimming
Then everything will be alright

Wineglass

An hour to midnight
     low lit lights
     gentle undertones

    stained clouds of moisture
in a glass of wine
as thick
         as ripe layers of fog.

hums of symphonies,
          swells of low pitched voices,
              crescendos of conversation.

     murmurs, whispers of fine China
      and the newest editions of
       oil paintings from Italy

                                      Midnight at the gallery

Once
clear glass, stained with
lipstick and breath --
     Laughter, light and
     undertones of ripe berry
lingered on the tip of glass.  

eyes wandering
over canvases of
lavish art
While stained clouds
of  moisture

are as thick as
ripe layers of fog.

Somedays I break down
and somedays I cry
somedays the nights are hard
and somedays I don't stand up

Sometimes I can't hold it
and sometimes it hurts
sometimes the void gets bigger
and sometimes I can't get out

One day I will show you me
and one day I will be honest
One day I will be honey and glass
and one day you will see it

and all i craved in that moment
was whatever you had to offer
i tried so hard
to open you,
to take a drink of your love
in hopes that maybe
someday
you might love me the same
but you were impossible
like a bottle
made of all glass
with no opening
and for months
i tried to
break you open
but i never could
until one day
you cracked
and it was then that i realized
you were an illusion
making me believe that
you could satisfy my thirst
but you didn’t
you never could.

The aquarium is a jar
that crams the bottomless sea,
within a glass bottle.
Like the pool of liquid in my palms
that reflects the starry sky above,
it is a fragment
of what cannot be fractured.