Featuring Adrian Manning

......................................................

Hard Skinned

lizards, snakes 

and toads

infiltrate my dream

scurrying into 

the cracks

or leaping at me

cold blood and 

soulless eyes

hard skinned in 

reptilian

madness

increasing in number

a virus

crowding the nights

silent space

until I wake

sweating

damp and

cool

and

joining them

in my 

sickness

.................................

We Are Three Old Friends

sat around a table 

with a fresh round of drinks

and the laughter

from so many years of 

not taking anything seriously

still rumbling in our guts

so now when we riff 

on the state of the nation 

and the decline of civilisation 

we can disagree and 

forgive each other

as easily as the rain falling and evaporating on the window pane reflecting 

our gentle leaning

toward last orders

at the bar

.............................

Music and Noise

music without words 

that’s what I need right now

some space to breathe

noise static works

sound almost unbearable 

but

there’s comfort in discord

.................................

Das ist Alles

ok

it's been a ride

but

let's forget it

let's call it quits 

let's get out of here

and really make it

you'll know where to

find me

longitude -1.139759

latitude 52.636878

you may hear me 

coughing into the clouds 

sometime 

somewhere

maybe you won't 

be listening

but

you know where 

to find me

and

das ist alles

das ist allen

...............................

Codeine Coincidence

I’m sat in the doctors

waiting room

reading a book of poems

by John D. Robinson

while a woman is

talking loudly with no

sense of her own privacy 

about her codeine

prescription 

I turn the page to read

‘codeine haiku’ 

the next poem

as the receptionist tells

her that her script is

with the chemist

“Is there plenty of it?”

the woman asks

and I look at the page

thinking there’s more

around

than I thought 

obviously

the screen flashes

and she is gone

I’ve turned the page 

to the next poem

and that is the end

of the codeine 

coincidence

and

I sit hoping

everything will be

ok

A bio:

Adrian Manning is a poet from Leicester, England. He has been widely published in magazines, online and in a number of chapbooks. A full length selected poems collection “Digging Up The Bones” has just been published by Uncollected Press (https://therawartreview.com/books-for-sale/ ) He is also the editor of Concrete Meat Press.