Written for an AllPoetry contest using the Stanzuka form.
The Marketplace – 16th July 2026
It feels like shouting into the wind,
Chancers – 15th July 2026
Hate is fun and truth is boring
The double-think tanks are rolling
The winners are always scoring
to maintain social controlling
To hear is not as to listen
Words twist being misunderstood
Making a new world to christen
that denigrates the greater good
Hate now truth so fun is boring
The doublespeak presses rolling
Spread the fires that have been storing
the hatred of past extolling
Let’s start to listen more than hear
All problems are found with answers
Let’s not make this hate a career
and so become the last chancers
Today’s Daily Stoic poem:
Doing The Right Thing Is Enough
Doing the right thing
Doesn’t need a return
Doing the right thing
Is all there is to learn
Longing – 14th July 2026
Longing for the useless
Holding on to the pain
Oh, to end this longing
A devoted life
To which could not explain
The waiting to begin
Today’s Daily Stoic poem:
A Little Knowledge is Dangerous
Your power must be in harmony with nature
Teachers are hardest on the brightest
The wise learned a little knowledge is dangerous
Study the basics to become the tightest
The Languishing – 13th July 2026
Let’s keep it real
Not crashing or climbing
Not in a free fall nor soaring
No clarity, hunger or drive is felt
Nothing is exciting
Or even boring
Breathing
Is not the same as living
Functionally folding laundry
The outside held together
For the performing
Something’s missing
Projects unfinished
Victims of the scroll
Conversations without connection
Every day is a blur
Of muted pleasures
Laughter without the light
Stuck in an emotional neutral
No accelerator and no brakes
Not suffering or thriving
Disconnected from purpose
Treading across the middle ground
Dispassionately driving
Every step feels
Heavier than it should
Push on through
But never out of the mud
Forgetting the freedom
Of waking up with urgency
The mornings are dangerously quiet
Today’s Daily Stoic poem:
A Leader Leads
A leader will lead so the deeds got done
And there’s no need to tell everyone…
My God Can Beat Up Your God – 12th July 2026
*We are discrete sheep
Waiting to see how the drove is going*
And then we go with it
Proud that our independence is showing
Our lies made sincere
As we soon teach ourselves to believe
The game is understood
It’s only ourselves that we deceive
Yet gathered in flocks
Intolerant to those standing at the edges
It is to only one shepherd
That the independent individual pledges
*Mark Twain inspired the rest of this write.
Today’s Daily Stoic poem:
Some Simple Rules
Don’t procrastinate, don’t confuse
Don’t let your thoughts wander far
Passive or aggressive, you will lose
Let these rules become who you are
Literary Foxholes – 11th July 2026
In opposition trenches
Writers formulate their opuses
Moulded around languages
The falling bomb focuses
Revealing who they really are
It’s the biggest battle of nerds
It’s all written across the page
Played in this theatre of words
Inspired by Existential Comics #632
Today’s Daily Stoic poem:
The Start-Up Of You
Attending to improvement, day by day
You’re in the business of building
Your company is more than play
But your whole life you are gilding
My poem Under The Cover got published at the Edge of Humanity magazine
The Conjuring – 10th July 2026
The first happy inhale -
a lifetime later, the sigh
- the last sad exhale.
Avoiding all enquiries,
attempting to postpone the inevitable,
substituting love along the way.
Between the banks of life and death
there is the possibility to conjure
the river of love.
Fumbling at the dark edges,
the flaming waters rise
only in certainty.
Why go on carrying dead things?
Expectations kill dreams.
So be certain.
Come alive.
A paraphrasing of certain standout phrases from Chapter 3 (I think) of Osho’s Life, Love and Laughter
Today’s Daily Stoic poem:
Love The Humble Art
Thriving on the practice
Time is always made
Loving the process
Humble art will never fade
No Skin – 9th July 2026
The shots come from the cheap seats
unfiltered by positioning;
honest motives hold on to their receipts
so you'd better get to listening.
Inspired by a David Elikwu newsletter.
Today’s Daily Stoic poem:
The Philosopher King
We’re all leaders in one way or another
Philosophy leads us to be king
We can’t just make it up as we go
Our reason and ethics must sing
Indecision – 8th July 2026
Learning to choose is hard
– sometimes you’ll never start,
And to choose well is harder
– never mind going any farther.
Too many choices make
the easiest one to take.
Today’s Daily Stoic poem:
Stop Monkeying Around
Who is responsible for your whining?
Even monkeys have more self-respect
You’ll find your character declining
From all the complaining you collect
Theological Alibi – 7th July 2026
Let me show you what they assembled.
Lavender is an AI engine
that flags tens of thousands of Palestinian men for death.
The Gospel spits out more than 100 bombing targets a day—
names that once took military intelligence a full year to gather.
Where’s Daddy, the sick name of a tracker
that follows a man home,
then kills him there,
where his children are.
Twenty seconds.
Enough time for an officer to glance a target,
just long enough to see the shadow of a male.
This is not the fog of combat.
This is a factory.
Those who run it believe the land
was promised to them by God.
That is the sum that should stalk your sleep—
the slickest killing apparatus ever turned on a people,
operated by a state with a theological alibi.
The same trap is deployed against anyone who speaks up.
They tell the queer organiser:
those people would never stand with you.
They tell the feminist:
those people would never march for you.
The chorus does not shift.
Your compassion is wasted
because the dying do not echo your words.
A child should not need the correct ideology to deserve to live.
That is not a radical statement.
It used to be the floor.
The thing everyone agreed on
before we began means-testing
who deserves to live.
A child in Gaza did not script Europe’s antisemitism.
A family in Rafah did not run the death camps.
Yet they are paying the bill all the same—
in levelled streets,
in families,
in children.
Every major military on earth is studying what Israel has done in Gaza.
They are taking notes.
The manual being drafted in plain view
proves that you can kill at scale,
from a distance,
with a 20-second glance and
a holy text as a warrant,
and the world will watch and qualify and explain.
This poem is a paraphrase of an article that I failed to note the URL for but you can find information on Lavender, The Gospel and Where’s Daddy? here. It is sickening. Israel is a sick society, and for both Jews and Palestinians to remain safe, it needs to be destroyed.
Today’s Daily Stoic poem:
1994ever 