In this month’s poetry showcase we focused on the theme ‘Fantasy’- be it a secret crush in a coffee shop line or a D&D adventure!
The Power of Fantasy
We sit together around our fading campfire,
sharing in the adventures of heroes we will never get to see;
heroes we will never truly get to be.
We share in heartbreak, strife, and misery,
but together also celebrate victories
great and small,
be it saving a single child, or else an entire civilisation from destruction,
the joy it brings binds us all.
We slay great beasts, we laugh, we smile,
we take breaks from our conquests, drink together – if only for a short while
because soon enough another threat presents itself,
another dragon must be slain,
another town saved,
and it is we who will do this – we who will share in this adventure,
this success, or perhaps failure, together.
We sit around the fading campfire –
A robotic beep, a notification
‘your battery is running low’.
The fading firelight reverts to its true form –
the fading brightness of my laptop screen, as its battery slowly dies
The faces of the adventurers beside me disappear,
once again becoming only voices projected into my ears,
assisted not through close proximity,
but headphones which are far too big for me.
Our adventures remain only fiction,
A shared dream, – a fantasy
but, if truth be told, when life can be so full of stress,
of misery,
where dragons come in the shape of deadlines,
and victory comes in the form of but a number – a 70,
when a break is wandering down to mooch, and sharing not ‘ale’ but a Kopparberg,
or three…
then I ask you – what is so wrong in engaging with a fantasy?
For truly, such fantasies are the greatest escape,
from life’s cruel miseries.
Georgia Butcher
The Green Lady
You wouldn’t notice her at first
Clutching the blackened corners of the room
Skulking and groping her way
Along the mildewed walls and sticky tables
Her presence growing with each rolling second
Amongst the heaving crowd her emerald eyes
Fix dead upon your blood-shot whites
Her advance spurring the dread that
Tiptoes down your spine as the room
Fades into a dark and dirty distance
A muted little grot in the corner of
Existence as all that remains is the Lady
Striding forth in acid conviction
Each step pounding across your skull
Then the fear and the shock explode
Into brute green flames that scold
Every inch of your doubled form
Roaring along your veins until the second
Your heart can thump no louder
The burning fades its force all spent
The Green Lady lapses into murky air
And as you set down the absinthe glass
Life returns to the bar.
Sam Young
Spirits
The poltergeist is here again tonight,
back in this room with me
and though it isn’t of another realm
it’s not of ours either.
It’s locked within my head
playing the lines of a love story
that I refuse to know.
It presses on me every night
and keeps the surrender of sleep away.
A demon in my skull
that reminds me to fear the past.
That keeps the gut-turning horrors
real
and alive.
No hot holy water of my eyes
exorcises her away
and insecurity manifests
a constant evening companion.
Holly Wilson
Dear coffee aficionado
Dear coffee aficionado,
we’ve queued together a couple times, I’m the one
with the glasses who once said hi,
but can never catch your name when you give it to the barista.
Still, who needs names?
Our mutual need for caffeine is enough
to fuel my fatal flaw as a hopeless romantic:
I can’t help but believe
in chance, constructing these coffee break coincidences into meant to be moments,
you glanced back and our eyes meet so maybe-
I just fell in love with fiction, lost my head in sugared day dreams of a date after asking you out,
only my tongue got tied up,
and I watch you walk away
with your cup,
free hand entwined in theirs, reality
bitter as too-strong coffee.
Lauren Winson
Will-o’-the-wisp
I follow the string of lanterns
In the late dusk eve
My memory dapples
With illusions of you
I chase those shadows
With my eyes
Lit by the pearlescent teardrops
Of the crescent moon
Hung against
The midnight palette of the sky
I trip and dance
Falling prey
To the fey
Silhouetted in a daydream
Romance heady in the air
Choosing to fall into the catacombs
Of desire
Coaxed by the floating fairy lights
For a glimmer of the ethereal.
Esther Kearney
To get your work featured, send your submissions to entertainment@impactnottingham.com, or message Esther Kearney via Facebook.
Featured image courtesy of Georgia Butcher.
Other images courtesy of youthfulc ,Sara Hester, Art Gallery ErgsArt – by ErgSap, Bartosz Mogie?ka and Richard Pearson via Flickr.
Image use licence here.
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