Month: November 2024

Canon – 20th November 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 13 Comments

I have the words within my pages
My knowledge forms your future texts
Amassed wisdom sung from many sages
Collected comforts to which all connects

This power I pass for you to share
The lessons lived easily explain
To conquer chaos and choose to care
To shrink in size or grow to gain

Your personal action accumulates
Eyes sparkle like dancing diamonds
Mixing the messes of made mistakes
Form the future from many islands

Shared with What Do You See #263 and submitted to an AllPoetry assignment about alliteration.

It Was Told – 19th November 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 5 Comments

Time out of mind, the rock of ages
The time of our lives was to be had
Foretold on ageing faded pages
Three heads good, foreheads bad

Sands a-trickle made to measure
Losing track as the dawn is cracking
Always racing towards some leisure
Begged and borrowed to be slacking

It’s up, beyond a blue moon hiding
To weave a future, past and pleasant
Dropped stitches will do their biding
When Nick manifests in the present

Shared with No Theme Thursday picture prompt (above) and Moonwashed Weekly Prompt – Foretelling

Boredom – 18th November 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Sat in cafe corners
Quietly going out of their minds
A complete picture of confusion
It’s the illusion that blinds

The last page read
Of Notes From Underground
Dragged down into the illusion
A confusion so profound

Mother Nature ripped them off
Consigned to just a minor part
Boredom won out after all
The fall came before the start

The ‘almost-was’
That in cafe corners hides
Couldn’t pick a side to fall
After all, shot by both sides

Inspired by and paraphrased from Howard Devoto, reading about him in Rip It Up and Start Again

One Of The Gang – 16th November 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Showed my buds, I’m one of them
When they watched me stick it in
I bring freedom with a gun
And I’m responsible for no one

We three, prod and poking
Watching the sunset paradise
Sipping dry martinis of tears
Laughing at a 12-year-old’s fears

We three, the seventy per cent
Paid us for our duty
A dividing line, a locked gate
Allows us to rob and rape

Watch again as I stick it in
We’re bonding over this flesh
This little girl, powerless in pain
Coerced to let the gang remain

After reading about the 1995 gang rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US soldiers in Okinawa.

Fatman report

Chess With Pigeons – 15th November 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Lined up against the wall
Identified with your tribe
Where does the mindset shift
From the rules that you prescribe?

This game isn’t easy
Yet played out every day
All uniquely similar
In deeds and words we say

Incited to live in fear
Lies are told as true
Only some allowed to win
But tell that you can too

A race to become less tolerant
Can be run in any way seen fit
Upend the board and strut around
Covering everything in shit

Inspired by this great post at The Renegade Press

Build Your Brain – 14th November 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 12 Comments

Million dollar questions
Blind spots abound
Magical machine limitations
Mapping mountains found

Collect complementary artefacts
Elevate our understanding
Synaptic message transference
Magic made mind-expanding

Engaged spatial reasoning
Exempt obedient demands
Onwards and upwards
Internal freedom commands

Everything ever got
Meant diddly squat

…say what!?…

Inspired and paraphrased from a David Elikwu newsletter and shared with dVerse Quadrille #212 – what

A Crack In The World – 13th November 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

What version of me did I show you?
Was the impression left in your mind
The enigmatic or the sad and sulky?
Which one would you prefer to find?

I was hiding, desperately
Trying to be anything but myself
To slip through a crack in the world
Leaving an image of someone else

I cross each bridge as I burn it
Wait impatiently for the credits to roll
Each day takes a small part of me
Once put together defines the whole

Inspired by a few paraphrased quotes within.

In Submission – 12th November 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

A smart-mouthed bad crazy-drunk
Forgotten night of manic adventure
Black-eyed slurred self-pity
Another slug of ‘no surrender’

The door opened by the bottle
Ushers safety within its cage
Discard the day of tired dreams
Darkness enlightens the stage

The truest friend ever found
Til the comfort became a curse
A body weighted in dilemma
On a mission to submerse

Down, down under the table
Joined by the rats and the finks
Afraid of love, the amber’s pull
Further into the ether sinks

Another sniff to calm the edges
Eyes hidden from the light
Til Jesus was doing cartwheels
Across the lawn one night…

Submitted to AllPoetry.com competition of Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins quotes. Quote as prompt (and paraphrased):“Jesus was doing cartwheels across the lawn in the porch light.”