Along with reams of short stories, and longer attempts at fiction, I’ve written countless poems over the decades. The bulk were written in my teens and twenties and I literally have folders full of handwritten and typewritten compositions.

I’d been threatening to put a selection into print since the mid-90’s. I remember discussing it with an old girlfriend in ’95 but a number of things always seemed to stop me. Part of that was not really being sure if I wanted to share them with the world, part was never having the time to go through what was amounting to thousands of bits of paper – ranging from typed and formatted finished compositions to hand written stanzas on the back of paper bags, or anything I had at hand when inspiration hit.

A few years ago I finally got round to sorting out a collection and published them under the title “Wild Card Symphonies”. Consisting of three smaller volumes of my work, “Wild Card Symphonies”, “Cry To Me”, and “This Graveyard Heart”, the book totaled just over 120 poems. You can buy a copy (plug plug) through Lulu on one of the links at the bottom of the page if you like what you read and want to have more.

To Manufactured Heavens

You promised me poisoned lips

That would surely lead to more

I’m not interested in that kind of heaven

Tonight I want something real.

I can’t help it,

It’s just the way I feel.

It may be gone by tomorrow

Discarded on the floor

And I’ll be back to my old ways

With temptations leading me astray

To manufactured heavens

With their moments of release

And the touch of poisoned lips.

I may scream and long for a taste

But tonight I abstain.

I must resist. I want to resist.

That’s wrong.

For I crave deep inside

To be allowed heaven tonight

With its pleasures and its touch.

Heaven.

I want it running through my fingers

While I lay naked in the sweat

Caused from previous actions

Of what some call love.

The taste on my lips

Is to me everything at this present time

More real than my blood is

Or the sight of your naked sex

It pulls all of my concentration

My only thoughts are to have more.

More of this fake reality

That I’ve worked so hard to forget

I hear it’s calling as vividly

As the taste that fills my mouth

My body moving towards a door

Something inside,

Some repressed instinct,

Wants to find an exit from my addiction

But the rest of me screams no

And it is overcome in waves of self-centred anger

And I return to your side

For another dance

With another face.

(TO MANUFACTURED HEAVENS, By A R J Abranson, 25-02-93/19:45 + 21:16)

My poetry anthology, Wild Card Symphonies, is available to buy now on Lulu in both Softcover and Dust Jacket Hardcover.

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Wild Card Symphonies, Cry To Me & This Graveyard Heart are Copyright ©2015, Angus Abranson. All rights reserved.
Cover design by George C. Cotronis (Ravenkult Studios, www.ravenkult.com) Copyright © 2015 Angus Abranson
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
No reproduction in part or in whole without prior written permission from the author of the copyright owner.