The Lunch Room – 23rd October 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Aliens are interesting,
microwaves are boring.
All the circles have been cropped.

The principles of parsimony
have few followers
while there are benefits in believing.

This time is different,
beyond sophistication
and there’s money to be made in the bubble.

Are you insulted when asked
if it’s plugged in?
Not everything is a conspiracy.

The answer you seek
is often closer than you think.
Start in the lunch room.

Inspired by a David Elikwu newsletter, which included this little story:

In 2015, we discovered aliens again.
A group of astronomers at Parkes Observatory in Australia noticed these brief, intense, and seemingly random bursts of radio information; mysterious signals that seemed to be coming from the further reaches of space. They called them “perytons”.
For months, the team worked to identify the source. It could be neutron stars colliding. Black holes merging. Or potentially, hopefully, signals from intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.
Emily Petroff was determined to solve it. But she’d noticed something odd. The perytons only appeared during working hours. Australian working hours. Never at night. Never on weekends. Always during the day when staff were in the building.
She eventually realised that every time they detected a signal, the telescope had been pointed in the rough direction of the staff break room.
After deep investigation, she discovered the truth. The alien signals weren’t coming from deep space. They were coming from staff heating lunch in the microwave.
The microwave happened to operate at 2.4 GHz, close enough to frequencies the telescope could pick up.
Even though microwaves famously work within Faraday chambers, anytime someone impatiently opened the door before the timer finished, the magnetron was still running, sending a burst of radiation that the telescope dutifully recorded as a cosmic event.
Despite months of investigation, with sophisticated equipment and some of the world’s best astronomical experts, they were all undone by a microwave twenty metres away in the kitchen.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Show The Qualities You Were Made For

It’s easy to blame your circumstances
There’s always someone better off than you
So what happens depends on your choices
Let your effort and skill shine through

Are You Sleeping? – 22nd October 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 4 Comments

Give your hopelessness a name

– Hibernate your dreams away –

The darkened cave cannot tame

Pretensions that will remain



Sleep through the alarm again

– Here’s a quiet hollow to stay –

Nurture that you can’t explain

What could I say but my name?

Inspired and mostly re-arranged words from this post at Tiny Hearts

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

It’s Easy To Get Better But Better At What?

Self-improvement is a noble pursuit
Though vanity can corrupt the process
Getting better at stuff will dilute
The better person you wish to express

Title Fight – 21st October 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments 
Ding! Ding! Ding!
  Do you leap from bed
  and into the ring?

Are you light on your feet,
  bouncing off the ropes,
  in the box seat?

Or is the inner critic
  a crooked referee
  and a white flag cynic?

Knockout or submission,
  pinned in a sleeper hold
  or full-nelson position.

In the corner, quietly sweating
  will those rubber arms rise
  to face the arena’s setting?

Tonight’s main event:
  Me vs. Tomorrow, no disqualifications.
Step forward with intent
  and meet your obligations.

Are you ready to face the day?
Inspired by a David Elikwu newsletter.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Heroes, Here And Now

In vain, we hope our name remains
But now is the time to be praised
You’ll never hear your legacy explained
Let your contemporaries be amazed

Stuck – 20th October 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 5 Comments

Anxious at the infinite
I don’t want this freedom at all
Give me a set of blinkers
To hide my eyes from the sprawl

Confused at the crossroads
Each horizon out of vision
Clutching a map with no borders
Contemplating each decision

Paralysed by all the choices
Someone, please, close the prison door
Take away possibility
I don’t want it anymore

The paradox of freedom.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Marks Of A Good Life

If lives provide the answer to meaning
There is no question other than being good
Self-control, courage, freedom and justice
Are the trees to grow in your wood

Patty – 19th October 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

A little rain, a little mud
This is what it’s all about
She’s the little one who would
Keep on going without doubt

Inspired/paraphrased from this Peanuts strip (which I now want to read more of, thanks to this article)
Coincidentally, last night, while trying to get back to sleep after Tigger continually waking me to eat, my nostalgic mind (far too nostalgic recently) replayed a lot of teenage memories and about 95% of them occurred outdoors and 0% of them featured rain. Has my memory made England more miserable than it actually was?

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Good Habits Drive Out Bad Habits

With a bad habit revealed
Counteract with commitment
Don’t keep the good concealed
Let it be your equipment

Ants – 18th October 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments 
The newest members of the colony
    stretch fresh legs from soft white larvae,
        the infant.

All labour for the greater good,
    standing guard around the brood and queen,
        the participant.

One emerges bent, antennae lost,
    still striving to belong within the swarm,
        the mutant.

Wisdom threads through every caste,
    from weavers to the tireless leaf-cutters,
        the consultant.

Before the magistrates’ mandibles
    stands a trembling plea for mercy,
        the defendant.

Declared unfit, cast from the nest,
    it wanders through the undergrowth—
        the immigrant.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Frenemies

Nothing worse than a wolf befriending sheep
But remember that you’ve been the wolf too
When the bad friend was worthwhile to keep
That’s when the frenemy became you

Keepsakes – 17th October 2027

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 15 Comments 
1.
A kangaroo skipped in
   while blustering storms
   blew through cobwebbed windows
   shuddering bed frames
   jolting my dreams to life—
   losing a day somewhere over the ocean

2.
A Golden Kaiser-i-Hind flew down
   from the highest bough
   and fell into my warm hands
   a little too soon
   a smooth and shiny candy
   eager to be eaten

3.
A quiet smiling kokeshi
   on the bookshelf
   anime eyes wondering
   a green tea maid
   a soy sauce sorceress
   keeping secret doubts

4.
A spicy Sriracha soi dog
   wanders a tropical island night
   shadow dancing in firelight
   before sunrise reveals
   floods of frangipani
   and a chain of jasmine blossoms

5.
All of all of you
   broke off a piece
   that you keep
   as I keep mine
   like a trinket
   like a teacher

Shared with dVerse MTB: Cadralor
5 numbered stanzas
choose 3-10 lines per stanza (keeping the stanza length throughout)
each stanza stands alone as an imagist poem (just the obliquest of connections)
5th stanza pulls the 4 unrelated stanzas together into a poem of love, of yearning
rhymes and syllabic meter are NOT wanted

Golden Kaiser-i-Hind is China’s national butterfly
A kokeshi is a traditional Japanese doll
A soi dog is a stray Thai dog (soi means lane)

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The Benefit Of Kindness

Nature bids us to do well by all
Every moment is an opportunity
In return expect nothing at all
The kindness is all that needs to be

Blaskó – 15th October 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 22 Comments 
the tick
tick
clicking
creaking
on the stairs
...
three incessant brides
seductive
and cold
count steps
into a darkened cellar
strewn with time's dead flowers
and déjà vu
...
tick
tick
click

Shared with dVerse Poetics, taking Bauhaus’ Bela Lugosi’s Dead as inspiration and borrowing the line ‘strewn with time’s dead flowers’. Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó was Bela Lugosi’s full name.
Prompt: Write from inside an abandoned mansion after midnight. There is no obvious ghost—yet every room suggests someone has only just left.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Give People The Benefit Of The Doubt

Everything turns on your assumptions
Are you generous and forgiving
Or with malice and presumptions?
Which makes for calmer living?

Hedgehogs – 14th October 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Hedgehogs edge through needled air,
prickled backs in winter’s shiver,
wanting heat yet fearing heartache,
drawing near but unable to deliver.

Humans do the same in cities,
hands half-reached, then pockets-deep,
trading jokes for silent distance,
fearing wounds that love can keep.

We rehearse our careful manner,
measured hugs and a fenced-up heart,
confined to barbs in our tidy circles,
wisdom learned – to stay apart.

I learn to live on my inner warmth,
as some nights, beside smaller fires,
I find I’m not so lost or lonely
with everything a hedgehog desires.

Inspired by the Hedgehog’s Dilemma.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem

Don’t Get Mad. Help

Without drama or an unseemly show
It’s only right to let another know
Perhaps there is a better way
So everyone may calmly stay