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.

© BH 2011

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I wrote this for Andy McCallum Crawford's blog, Wee Fictions. He supplied the title. And the maximum word count. I thought about fleshless poverty, an increasing danger these days, and the human condition, of course. I got it in 86 words.