MATT DUGGAN - POEMS

Born 1971, Bristol, U.K., Matt won the prestigious erbacce prize for poetry in 2015 with his first collection Dystopia 38.10 (erbacce-press) his poems have been published in many journals such as The Journal, The Seventh Quarry, Black Light Engine Room, Prole, Ink, Sweat, and Tears, Lakeview International Journal, Five 2 One, Yellow Chair Review, Page and Spine, Harbinger Asylum, in 2016, Matt won the Into the Void Poetry Prize with his poem Elegy for Magdalena, and was taken on by erbacce press as one of six core members of the press, in 2017 his new chapbook Metropolis will be published by Hunting Raven Press.
Matt has read at many events in the U.K, in Italy, and in Greece, and is the co-editor of The Angry Manifesto Magazine and runs his own Poetry events in his hometown of Bristol in the U.K.

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                                  Imposter
 
​
No matter if we fall asleep
under an architect’s scorched city,
red garages with empty cars –  cackling arms on large clocks
smouldering under white stars like rising blood stones;
 
No shelter for the weak among us
as we watch each other
like a fox stalking a chicken in a pen; electric curtain peepers –
smirking at cold strangers where an angel hooks her claws.
 
Into the city that spits you out among the lost and slumbered; 
whispering melody exhaling these lepers
if every raindrop that falls on this night
is the sweat of all regret we’ll drink the murk of our inconsistencies;
 
lead hope like a blind dog
searching for our true existence
forgiving the blood thirst from heavenly quadrants;
reveal the guardians as imposters weaving tragic lies twisted in black and white.
 


                                   Metropolis
 


Bright neon sign highlighting tower blocks
where a forest once lay beneath our feet,
urban garden full of burial sites for a fox
digging his last collection of stored meats,
only the sleepless hear the long seconds on a clock
with pacing legs under running bed sheets.
 
Sweat lingers and patterns a map on white sheets
only the city silences the screams between blocks,
hunting among the concrete for dead meat
once a forest now a metropolis for the fox,
pumping blood from the trees into mechanical feet
this kingdom can no longer count the sun clock.
 
Time is not told through shades but a ticking clock
It’s foundations curved in metal and brass sheets,
mortar and brick have multiplied these tenement blocks
like serving the bone on a plate with no meat
where the natural world is a concrete hive for the hungry fox,
where a forest once lay beneath our feet.
 
 
 
 
                           The Echo Chamber
 

Every night I listen to a man going mad
it starts with the moving of wardrobes
the wincing cry through thin plasterboard,
a building crescendo of expletives
repeated again and again -
At the voices that surround him,
 
Every night I listen to a man going mad 
until one night the screams paused
no sound of friction behind these thin walls;
just rolling sirens melting in windows
that blue and red repetition -
Every night I listen to a man going mad.
 
 
 
                            The Blue Wristband
 

She ate chips in the dark
hiding where light glides in the shadowed patches;
as she waits.
 
At night her façade breaks
make-up running deep as that once ever so confident girl
slides up her blue wristband;
 
Each slice is a voice breaking on the shoreline
each cut her inner struggle is mapped from back head of knuckles
into her pale blue veins.
 
When daylight shows the morning crest
those blue wristbands linger of washed fragrance,
smelling fresh
 
No glimpse of blood her scars imprisoned
only in the room that the girl with the blue wristband;
feels she is most alive.