Poetry by Matt Duggan

Where Dead Dolls and Bald Mannequins Live

Wild grass is now the floating dust
particles of human flesh spinning in air
like pollen in silver pools;

The books have been replaced
in a library that empties ink
into burial holes circled with biblical waste.

A god murders a goddess
where decapitated ghosts
swear an oath for doctrines
that swept us all in unholy chaos;

monuments in chalked yellow
topple and crumble with single shoes and sandals
caked in the leather of scarlet.

Hurting children play with dead dolls
where bald mannequins sway
in the openings of broken glass;

Children without skin
a hydra building another severed head
swapping eyes for a millennium of benevolent prayer
under a tomahawk sunrise a Motherland is aggrieved.




Did I Piss on your Psychopomp ?

The passage that you take beyond stars that don’t exist
a journey that covers the earth where judgement is the tool
used to undermine intelligence;

Over seeking of attentive listeners
did I piss on your Psychopomp?
smell the air and touch the petals
in gardens of the unconventional,

treat each ageless day  as a secret between passengers
folding flesh into envelopes posting grievance to the offices
that monitor each watchful breath I take –

Rub salt into my eyes I’ll heal the battered holes in the body
with the towering roots from a red orchid,
keep me in the shadows where I can break the light that you use to punish.

Those anecdotes of a life unlived
have become the fuel in an empty engine
optimised by a lite match
that I carry inside my eyes waiting to ignite

Leading your navigator into a new world
that you cower behind -
Did I piss on your psychopomp?




Metal

We are selling the metal that kills
so we can afford the spoons that feed our children;
then killing them with the metal that we’ve just sold
feeding them with the blood on the spoons from happy meals.  

We place them in the hands of our enemy -
How far into this storm must we all walk before we feel the cold?  
preferring the shine of falling eggshells in metal
where breath with flesh is applied – prescribing to gain from the metals of subtraction.

The daylight would be our undoing
eyes were transfixed by computer generated handshakes -
division of the heart and soul the lies are the truths of man’s inked ruin  
where only smoke rings travel along carpets like tiny drunken mice.  

We are selling the metal that kills
So we can afford the spoons that feed our children.

Bio: Matt has had his poems appear in many journals such as The Journal, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, Apogee Magazine, Harbinger Asylum, Prole, Algebra of Owls, London Grip, in 2015 Matt won the erbacce prize for poetry with his first full collection Dystopia 38.10 (erbacce-press) and in 2016 won the Into the Void Poetry Prize, Matt has a new chapbook out called Metropolis (Hunting Raven Press) and will be doing his first readings in Boston this May 2017. 

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