Poetry by Matthew Duggan ⊗ Art by Jason Turtel
I want a square of dryland
no darkness held together with fake plastic neon lamps,
a tomb of sound baked polythene,
no drone like eyes
a permanent iris stacked in accomplishing circles in source.
Comforting only the burial of day thoughts,
No hiding place for us for every door is an eye behind another window
each frame of glass a caught moment that we can upload and analyse at will.
No hiding place for us we are the grains of salt glued between the fingers of the state
human timers with numbers and a skin
the loyal paladin that is kept as a trusted mouthpiece,
the tread of excrement that smoothers the soft leather on the boardroom floor
No hiding place for me or you!
THE ANSWER TO WHEN IS NOW!
Are you stuck in stone
fingers the soft clay hardened by sea water,
a chink in the rusting armour of day
the X marked in blood – the muted imprimatur
for the answer to when is NOW!
NO matter if the pencils are broken
covered in blood on the ballot box floor
we must remove and open this case of apathy,
NO longer will we be the muted and ignored
for only when each voice can be heard,
will the face of any change ever emerge !
THE DAY BEFORE THE DARKNESS FELL
Yellow hound rushing the emerald bough
breath dancing with stems of broken steam,
white haired cloud darts the pallor skyway
above silver headed tree-tops circling the tentative day,
entangled complexion to our charlatan dreams.
Beats of the jaded night plough into insults
the beers were drank with gleeful speed,
I was woken by a chasm of the passengers daylight
this horrid execution engulfing our dusting sight,
an hour before the darkness would breathe.
THE WATCHER
I, the particles of lost sleep atoms in dreams stolen from men,
a red dress in a black and white flick
the vision of a dead friend talking through the smoke of candlestick,
arriving to whisper you that unfathomable end
I, once the watcher of the city.
The floating rust from queen white chandeliers
fast wind of dead electricity morphing into the corners of bedroom mirrors,
an eye for collecting imagery a digitised iris for the states cavalier.
Through air vents down gutters of dirty foam into the city,
Eye and director of the unravelling
the ear in the wall cavities of every citizen,
imprisoned our the pious members of the house
gone are the moon racers of determinism!
The city sleeps
while its engine room wakes burning the daylight coal
dewy oil,
under clouds skinny and starchy
the day provides it’s watchers.
WE THE RULED
We the ruled – torso of downward blood
pulse slowing our stretch in time
thin skin that grows like epicormic buds
lapping in raw licks of sea,
plebeian to a gentleman’s chimes.
We the ruled – an overfed vertex
for a pendulum that takes chunks
from our auditory cortex
Eon of wilted dummy hair
an overflowing kerf laid at severed trunks.
We the ruled – the impregnated spider
a fossil without tongues
the flaccid and unknowing outsider
a shell with no oxygen
who can only pamper and devour our young.
We the ruled – a stitched lip of dormancy
strapped to the turnbuckles by illusory impartiality.
INVOICING THE DEAD
See beyond that point – crisp and quiet triangle of sea
where fish were touched by the hand of Midas,
just russet anchors shipwreck debris
it’s watery belly so still and lifeless.
The soil beneath your worn feet is the ash of your Grandfather
oak splinters covered the naked green,
protruding stumps – blades with black grasshoppers
the woods a wasteland a swelling tangerine.
Luminous stream of bromine dioxins swimming in beating circles
around oak boulders wedged in ponds
can’t we see in the sands of time
look into how we’ve poisoned the human whirlpool.
When you have but exhausted it ALL –
Ingested the earth of all its flesh and oil,
fed on Mother’s last beating veins
now your invoicing the dead for their soil,
never regenerating from your excessive diet and want of a world and its pain.
Matthew Duggan…..Born 1971 Bristol UK
Poems published in The Apogee Journal, The Dawntreader, Expound, The Stare’s Nest, Lunar Poetry Magazine, The Screech Owl, Dwang 2, The Seventh Quarry, and many more.
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