A Wee Guest Poem: Brian Hill

Skint

Bare,
The earth, granular,
Flayed of whatever flesh
Clothed it.

Currency,
Like some blood,
Or a river’s water,
Ran till the season’s end
Where dryness,
Spendthrift time,
Brought night,
Dead of it:
3 AM.

Transaction,
Motion’s discord,
Accumulation’s ebb and flow,
Strips here and now
Of everything.

Circling,
Ownership,
Now yours, now mine,
Leaves each one of us
Destitute.

Decease,
Like winter,
Freezes a useless asset,
Paints a death’s head
On imaginary life,
Skin and bone:
Only the last remains.

In the earth,
Bare,
Skeletons endure.

*     *     *

Brian Hill is designer and filmmaker living in the wilds of Moray. He was, and still is, a founder member of Brian and the Brains and has also been known as the rhyme-slinger, Hilly cunctator, the cartoon cowboy, and latterly the planetarium poet. In between he has teased a living in the voluntary sector, designed for money and made tiny movies. He did have something published once and has written (and performed) many poems on astronomy, the cosmos and our heathen past, usually in complete darkness. His last public work was a voice over and short poem for Gill Russell’s Long Wave installation at the Clan Donald Centre in Skye, late 2010.