Otherworldly Narrative Poems: Volume 21

As a thank‑you to my readers, this volume contains five narrative poems, each at least fifty stanzas in length, with every stanza formed of six lines. They are written as self‑contained sagas — long, deliberate explorations of the otherworldly.

My focus remains unchanged. I write the otherworldly because it exposes the unstable core of Humanity — the part of us capable of compassion and cruelty, insight and delusion, creation, and destruction. Imagination is often treated as a trivial faculty, yet it is the one force that allows us to move beyond the narrow limits of our physical form. It can elevate or distort, reveal, or conceal. And the act of using it is never entirely safe.

These poems approach the otherworldly through the creation of Beings that sit at the edge of recognition. Some appear almost human; others do not. All are shaped by the influences that have followed me through life: old films, classic literature, Eastern and Western philosophy, and decades spent studying Humanity through the social sciences. I make no claim to originality in the traditional sense. My aim is not invention for its own sake, but exploration — to see what emerges when familiar archetypes are placed within unfamiliar cosmologies.

Because imagination has no boundaries, neither do these Beings. You will encounter creatures, shapeshifters, monsters, and entities that resist classification. They are not here to entertain. They are here to test the limits of what we believe ourselves to be.

At the centre of this work lies a simple question: What makes us Human? And if we can answer that, another follows: Are these qualities exclusive to us, or shared across all sentient life? If love, fear, longing, or consciousness are not ours alone, then our sense of specialness collapses. We become Earthlings first, Humans second. And with that shift comes responsibility. Perhaps we are meant to act as Guardians rather than Parasites.

I hope these poems allow your mind to move freely and travel where it needs to go.

If you enjoyed these stories in verse, you may wish to explore a new series I plan to publish in the near future: Voidian Horror in Verse. Like this one, it will be experimental. It will consist of ten poems, each at least ten stanzas long. Their structures will vary until I settle on the form that suits the series best. If you notice sudden shifts in style, it is simply me exploring possibilities — and I hope the results never feel dull. Most of the poems will begin relatively lightly, then grow darker over time. If they make you think, then the verse has done its job.

Safe journey.

D. James