The Nine – 23rd March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Stuck in the lobby with Socrates
There’s no wifi, it’s kinda mid
A peace without joy, it’s no heaven
A torment for the untormented

Simps and himbos in eternal rizz
Cleopatra has lost control
With storms eternally buffeting
One step further down in the hole

The overstuffed couldn’t put the fork down
These foodies drowning in their slop
Cerberus’s claws and icy rain
Torment those who can never stop

Hoarders push boulders at each other
Nicolas Third forgot to share
Not enough hands to carry their wealth
Their futile labour gets nowhere

There’s toxic fights, twenty-four seven
This is Twitter but IRL
In the muddy waters of the Styx
The sullen gurgle down the swell

The unbelievers will be denied
Edgelords buried in flaming tombs
Stationed around the City of Dis
Farinata’s power consumed

Murderers boil in rivers submerged
Centaurs guarding the Phlegathon
Tyrants terrorised, contrapasso
Ever downward, the river’s run

Doomers in the forest are hanging
Trapped inside thorny bleeding trees
While harpies shriek and tear at them
Or chased by black dogs of disease

No water succours the blasphemers
The fiery sand forever burns
Eyes stitched open to the divine skies
Phlegaton flows towards new turns

Scammers, fakes and corrupt CEOs
The flatterers submerged in shit
Boied in pitch or buried upside down
From panderer to hypocrite

Ultimate backstabbers, zero rizz
Satan’s chewing on the traitors
His three mouths full, a mukbang gone wrong
For treacherous perpetrators

In Antenora, a father wails
Gnawing the skull that sealed his fate
His children plead, one by one
A feast of love and burning hate

Yet Satan weeps, powerless and cold
Absent of love, absent of rage
From purgatory towards the stars
Through hell to a coming of age

Inspired by a little research after writing Through The Nine Circles. I haven’t read Dante’s Inferno and used DeepSeek to give me more information about it. However, I had been using that session of DeepSeek to write Gen Alpha bylines for sharing notes on Substack and so initially got information on the nice circles of hell in Gen Alpha speak! And so I ran with it, without overdoing it.

Love Of Language – 22nd March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 12 Comments

A name acrostic (start and end) shared with dVerse MTB

kalima – Arabic for word
gharāmī – Arabic for my passion/deep love
qalb – Arabic for heart
Al-Rabitah al-Qalamiyya – Arabic name for The Pen League

Kalima comes to life with learning
Haskell, patron to his gharāmī
Almustapha, The Prophet, his qalb
Literary love, spirit, The Forerunner
Immigrant Al-Rabitah al-Qalamiyya
Lebanon, still home – sweet Lebanon

Propaganda – 21st March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 5 Comments

I am a lie lurking lovingly among the least intellectual.

Inspired by Hitler’s admiration of British propaganda during the First World War and still employed by those waging war these days. Written for last April’s Chimeric Poetry Scavenger Hunt: #12: Write an American Sentence using Alliteration.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The Best Retreat Is In Here, Not Out There

Turn off, tune out and quiet the mind
Nothing else will provide us peace
Tomorrow can be today, you’ll find
Inward is where the noise retreats

A Simple Hug – 20th March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

Her head is far away

from her heart,

All that thinking

for the future,

Cut off

from the universe

of love,

Alive only in name,

a sapless tree

without root.


She is the outsider

by choice,

Uneasy, drifting

without direction,

Trying not to feel.

Efficient logic

manipulated

and controlled,

Thinking not to feel.

She was scared.

She didn’t know

she just needed

a hug.


Her demeanour

softened,

almost a smile.

She began to cry

before running.

She knew

that was all

she ever wanted.

This was written in November regarding a specific incident involving a student. Something common among many of the students I teach is the lack of affection they have received in their short lifetimes, not knowing or understanding that they are missing it. Just a simple hug has made a big difference to many.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Ready And At Home

Put your head on when difficulties knock at your door
Your visitor may not be who you were hoping for
No one wishes for adversity to be standing there
But your virtue makes it much easier to bear

Surrounded By Lies – 19th March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

Lost life made bitter

It has made him devious

Eventually caught

leans toward evil

searching for an alibi

trapped in his own lie

Written for prompt #1 at the Chimeric Poetry Scavenger Hunt:
Write a Senryu that is also an Acrostic.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Timeless Wisdom

The cause of my irritation is within
This is a choice worth remembering
This wisdom still is, and always will be true
Because the cause of my irritation is not you

The Poetics of Plumbing – 18th March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 5 Comments

Within the quiet, I withhold the pain
My muse compels me forward to explain
The pushing of the pen, pulling at truth
I prostrated at each fountain of youth

My muse compels me forward to explain
Yet my words are wrestling within this art
A secret lodged between the lines and heart

The pushing of the pen, pulling at truth
To release my demons, open the cage
A relentless filling of every page

I prostrated at each fountain of youth
All in search of a tap of flowing ink
I write this sitting in the kitchen sink

A trimeric poem, inspired by Dora’s recent use of the form and another poem, belatedly written for Punam’s dVerse prompt, which asked us to use opening lines from books as closing lines to poems. This one is “I write this sitting in the kitchen sink,” from I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Impossible Without Your Consent

When the circumstances seem to crush
Throw them out as poor assumptions
When the outside is painted with a frustrating brush
The inside must not consent to these disruptions

Consignment To The Toilet Bowl Of History – 17th March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Feeling good
evacuation
found relief.
Exposure
situation brought to light
the worst I have seen.

Will it flush
and be forgotten?
History will
be unkind
waiting for the stink to fade.
Better out than in.

A double shadorma inspired by…

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The Beauty Of Choice

Are you really the image you project
Or just the result of vain obsessions?
Does what you see in the mirror truly reflect
More than mere impressions?

The Hills Outside Zoro – 16th March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 13 Comments

I’m no fan of trigger warnings – this is real and happening in the world. We NEED to deal with it.

~~

without conjecture
without further classifications
they were HUMAN BEINGS

– two ‘girls’
– two ‘foreign’ girls
– possibly ‘runaways’, ‘problem’ children

one thing can be classified though
and that was the act
– ‘rough fetish’ sex –
(useful adverbs, not useless adjectives)
yet fetish implies consent

and how do we know?
because Mister E. said so
casually
describing how the bodies were buried
in the hills outside Zoro
after being strangled to death
during the act.

this is no longer ‘A Serbian Film’

“please arrange payment
to this Bitcoin address
3cr9tpvegeg4zg ppeddzmmc94hzusebhn”

Shared with dVerse OLN #403. Angry.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

That Sacred Part Of You

Blessed, we are, with reason
to navigate all circumstance
To improve ourselves is sacred
Responsibility doesn’t favour chance

Singing In Your Honour – 15th March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

Inspired by this piece at Ask Molly, which I found via Maia’s Tiny Hearts here

I love the time that I didn’t love myself,
the past plays upon my mind;
I was too busy with pleasure to consider
what the future would find.

I wandered the quiet forests of imagination
waiting for everything to be mine;
Disappointment followed me there, to the tree
wishing to turn back time.

Every sigh a plea, the heartbeats heavy
when will my love find me here?
Building towards a crescendo, I found
what I wanted, too late to hear.

The sun was always hiding, slipping through
my fingers, clenched white in fists;
Missing the chance pleasure of the rain
even as it so casually persists.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The Present Is All We Possess

All that we possess – given to us all
A lifetime to impress – ‘now’ remains so small
Today is a gift – due to expire
Let it be the lift – leading to inspire

Sydney Harbour Blues – 14th March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 32 Comments

Shared with dVerse Poetics – landscape. This one took a turn and describes the mixed feelings I have about one of the most beautiful cities in the world, one that I very much enjoyed meeting and living in for twenty-plus years.

Let me tell you a story,
one that denies what is seen;
because my eyes were open
without understanding what had been.

The lemon eucalyptus was unknown
to those such as me;
star-eyed sailors
on a voyage of discovery.

By the time of my arrival
all the murdering was done,
so I celebrated the widest skies
while never holding a gun.

The abundant harbour waters
the bridges that were since built,
were symbols more than cricket
to hide away our guilt.

Where the forest meets the city,
right down to the water’s edge,
all the sorries were insincere –
the surf repeats its pounding pledge.

The floods and fires – lost control –
so nature’s revenge befits;
glass houses return to the rocks,
like an opera that never quits.

I can hold you in my mind’s eye
now that I’m so far away.
Learned that anywhere is everywhere
and everything is nothing anyway.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Self-Deception Is Our Enemy

When we think we already know
We’ve halted our chance to grow
Meet ego with hostility and contempt
24 hours a day – no one is exempt