Sympathies – 16th June 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen

I neither cared for you one way or the other,
your virtues and character were unknown;
Ambivalently sympathetic to your suffering
after all the horrible things I’d been shown;

But slowly you were revealed by yourself
to be equally similar devils in disguise;
Impossible to be unaware of the irony
of your actions and repeated ridiculous lies;

And if you were not hated before this
you are now surely bound to be;
To inflict a holocaust for any reason
removes all goodwill and previous sympathy;

There are those who still sit complicit
in their silence, they are justifying;
As if their own fingers pulled the trigger
and, not so quietly, cause all those dying;

What goes around will again come around,
this is the beginning of your own demise;
With no moral high ground to stand upon
there’ll be no one left to sympathise.

11 thoughts on “Sympathies – 16th June 2025”

    1. Thanks Sadje 🙏

      It seems most folks don’t like any political message in their poetry but for me, your words are your inner core being laid out, the expression of your belief.

      Poetry is political.

      I may have to disguise my point of view in a poem about the seasons and new spring blooms!

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      1. lol! I agree that most people want to read about lo, broken hearts and sorrows in a poem. But like you I also want to write about the real problems in our world today.

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  3. Powerful truth. Shaun, I place my faith in karmic retribution, but at the same time, it is totally unbearable to know of the suffering happening right now to the innocent. How can we make it stop? Protesting, letter writing, voting, calling, poems, all seem to slow the train of death only minimally.

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  4. Poetry is political…..yes! This is a powerful piece!

    “To inflict a holocaust for any reasonremoves all goodwill and previous sympathy;”and for me, I think the actual holocaust was horiffic. The destruction of humanity can be done in so many ways….and yes, those who are silent are complicit.

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