I can't see me unless I have a mirror.
I can see everyone through that glass.
But they are looking at themselves.

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

Smash the glass if you must, yet
do it gently using soft hammers.
Catch the fury in your breath and
release its image on the pane.

The goal is not destruction but creation,
to leave behind something cracked
yet still whole, hanging precariously together,
a reminder that we are all shards about to fall.

Tap and if it forms a line tap again,
until a lip forms a mouth, maybe yours,
a tear- an eye like your mother’s,
again, your father’s shattered brow.

Leave enough of you behind
for them to complete.
Gentrify the other glasses with
the genealogy of all your pain.

Make everything a museum of
all the world’s shattered glass
that none dare destroy  lest
even they fall apart

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.