Don’t Poke A Sleeping Cat – 8th August 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen

Behind the smiles, sharpened fangs
The soft face belies a strength
When considered less than human
She will go to any length
To give you a pause for reflection
A reconsideration of your role
Don’t imagine her at your level
With the humanity you stole
For her, it’s just another fight
One she’s fought so often
The rage never dissipates
And she’s careful not to soften

Written after seeing a particularly strong performance by a front woman for a band (SpeechOdd) and their song ‘More Than Decoration’.

Submitted to Poets and Storytellers United and somewhat connected to the prompt “Love your neighbour as yourself”

Today I’m feeling:

Exhausted.  I think that I slept deeply but only in small bursts, so that I woke up well before my alarm and realised that I needed way more rest and so I reset my alarm and decided not to go to school today.  I’m glad I did.

My alarm woke me up again at 7.30 and I sent messages to Kru Mai and sent some work for my morning class to complete and send to me.  Then it was back to sleep.

Around what I thought was maybe 10 am, I thought about maybe getting up but then checking my phone, I found that it was already 2pm!  I got up quickly, though still groggy and dozy.  I got on my laptop and sent work to my afternoon class that was due to start in 30 minutes.

After that, I almost fell asleep again watching videos and at around 5 pm, Amy made me fish congee with ginger, which made me feel much better, though I’m about to get back into bed again now at 8.30.

I think I’ll be ok to go to school tomorrow but the morning will tell for sure.

Today I’m grateful for:

The delivery guy who dropped off the record covers from Malaysia, though, didn’t contact me until later to pay the customs fee.  I don’t know what he would’ve done if I hadn’t paid him but I knew this was coming and happy to do the right thing despite how fucking annoying paying these fees are.

I can’t imagine anyone in the West trusting people like that.

The best thing about today was:

Catching up my exhausted body.  Have done little else today.

What was out of your control today and how did you handle it?

Naturally, sending my students work to do whilst I’m not in class causes more work for me – especially with the students who don’t bother to do anything and I have to chase them up.

10 thoughts on “Don’t Poke A Sleeping Cat – 8th August 2024”

      1. I only post one poem a day and wanted to get this one posted to Mr Linky whilst I remembered (and try to get more exposure). I have other poems scheduled until the 8th and then I will repost at the correct date which will change the url and make the original obsolete. It’s a bit of a pain (for me and you) so let me know if it’s too much trouble and I’ll try to come up with an alternative. 🙏

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        1. It’s not going to give you quite the amount of exposure as everyone else in the P&SU group, that’s all, as our posts stay open a week (starting Friday). However, most people read most of the posts early in the week, so perhaps you won’t lose too many viewings. On the other hand, if you post later than Friday, people may assume they’ve already missed out and not even look at your blog. You could link to the url of the original date, in which case the problem wouldn’t arise; that’s what I do when I share older stuff. Anyway, up to you of course. I was just curious.

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    2. An interesting take as you are coming at it from the cat side whereas I was writing from the empowered female side and using a sleeping cat as an analogy. Apart from a couple of lines it works well both ways.

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