Author: shaun tenzenmen

Australasian DIY music specialist and practising poet, amongst other things

Stuff The Chicken – 4th March 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Fixing the world at your barroom tables
Shaking fists at your agreeable fables
It’s simple in your circle of influence
To discount all the unsavoury elements

Warring in nations at your profitable leisure
Prodding the monkies to provide your pleasure
Your war is better than theirs, you beg
Stuffing the chicken back into its egg

9th Jun 2024 – Submitted to Ragtag Daily Prompt – stuff

When you have two choices, choose the more difficult one.

Stoic thought

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for everyone who helped me at the hospital. They made it very easy for me.

Sleepwalking – 3rd March 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Meeting you, asleep, amongst flowers
I curse you for destroying my youth
You are my enemy, I could kill you
The misty veil cannot hide the truth

And I too, your daughter, sleeping
Wish that you could also be dead
Standing between my freer self and me
My life will not echo all you have said

The cock crows, dew evaporates
Eyes open to the love of daughter and mother
The human condition, the order of nature
There is nothing else to be placed above her

Based on another Khalil Gibran parable

Discovering you were wrong is an update, not a failure, and your worldview is a living document meant to be revised.

Julia Galef

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to find that I can get a booster vaccine at the local hospital this morning. Need to go early and queue up.

The Week That Was – 8th April 1979

Mere Man – 2nd March 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Mother, I am a mere man
I will climb mountains higher than you can understand
To show what a human can do
Tut and scoff, weep and worry
Yet it is something I must do
I will attempt impossible things
Because in the death zone, I come alive
I will be strong
I will leave no brothers behind
You taught me everything
And this is to honour you

Written whilst watching 14 Peaks.

People get the mind and quality of brain that they deserve through their actions in life.

Robert Greene

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for this chocolate muesli to break up my normal breakfast eating. What a lot of work must go into making muesli.

The Warrior Intrepid – 1st March 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

My brain switched off, distracted
Just a second; my car, crashed it
Left it in gear, forgot the handbrake
Rolled on forward and smashed the gate
No real harm done, not this time
Scared one day I’m gonna get mine
Older, feeble-minded, decrepit
No longer the warrior intrepid

For mortals, the ‘easy life of the gods’ would be a lifeless life.

Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for my guitars that I can pick up and play when I feel like it.

Dust – 28th February 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

‘I am a piece of fallen skin’
‘I am a broken hair from a spider’s leg’
‘I am from dirt the cat tramped in’
We three wait
In a corner close to the walls
Behind and beside the washing machine
We see the day come and go
And we wait
Ants wander by often, lizards, sometimes, too
The cat peers under the machine
About once a week
And we wait
One day the machine is gone
And all traces of worldly humans
Soon the plaster and brick will crumble
And we wait
We see the weeds encroaching
Pushing through every crack
The wind will never find us here
And the heat and cold bother us not
And we wait
Now there is only darkness
Every living thing has disappeared
We float away in space
Waiting for a reformation

7th Nov 2024 – Shared with Ragtag Daily Prompt – dust

The most important skill of a species intelligent enough to understand both their insignificance and their mortality is the capability for distraction.

Tim Urban

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for the great variety of food I can find where I live. It’s still new and refreshing to me.

The Week That Was – 1st April 1979

A Meta Verse – 27th February 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Would you volunteer for a fatal addiction
To an electrical pleasure, brain implant
The sum of all pleasure, constant highs
A simple flick of the switch would grant?
Would you sacrifice your suffering
The demons and devils of your daily fight
The needles that give you balance
Just to die tomorrow in orgasmic delight?

We own our own minds – and together, we can take them back from the forces that are stealing them.

Johann Hari

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to be able to watch my garden grow and change over time. It’s amazing.

The Scarecrow – 26th February 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

The crows are building
Nests under my hat
I’ve thought long and hard
About this
And I’m no longer scared
To be alone

Based on the titular Khalil Gibran parable. I found almost every one of his parables poetically inspiring. More coming, I’m sure!
8th Feb 2024 – Shared to Weekly Prompts Wednesday Challenge Scary
2nd Nov 2024 – Shared with Word of the Day Challenge – scarecrow

…a fraction of atoms cohered into the elements necessary to form the complex structures necessary for life…the tiny improbable fraction of a fraction of a fraction with which we have the perishable privilege of contemplating the universe in our poetry…

Maria Popova, paraphrasing Alan Lightman

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to have discovered Khalil Gibran’s parables and to be inspired by them.

Where Go You, My Friend? – 25th February 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 12 Comments

I am not what I seem
I have masks to protect you from me
I stay alone in my house
And it will this way forever be

I am simply understood
Because I am a mirror in my ways
Yet you should not trust my deeds
Or my thoughts that reflect your plays

I hide from you my darkness
My skies of purple shadow
As you ascend yourself to Heaven
It’s down to Hell that I go

Your steps are taken with caution
Whilst my madness removes my care
There’s direction to your movement
But I feel it’s not going anywhere

My friend, you are not my friend
But how shall I make you understand?
My path is not your path
Yet together we walk hand in hand

Inspired by a Khalil Gibran parable, with the last four lines lifted word for word. I found this short parable very affecting and particularly relevant to my thoughts on friendship.

25th Mar 2024 – Submitted to WDYS with the above picture prompt

6th Sep 2024 – Submitted to Reena’s Xploration Challenge #346

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to Oasis restaurant for making yummy vegan food in Chiang Rai.

Choose Your Hurt – 24th February 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Do you believe you are hurt?
Did your mother rush to your side?
Pause, just for a moment
Just enough time to decide
A scraped knee from a bike fall
Or spiteful words screamed in hate
The response is always a choice
Is it a pain you can bear to take?
The bleeding body is real
But other situations require more thought
Are you just responding this way
Because that is all you were taught?

In my heart I laugh at thy love. Yet I would not have thee see my laughter. I would laugh alone.

Khalil Gibran, Me Friend

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful for my mobile app trainer who reminds me to be grateful every morning that I work out.

Under Cover – 23rd February 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Well, what is it? We don’t know
Is it even within our control?
Like electricity, yet without flow
What is this thing we call a soul?

Based on a Ray Charles quote

The slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth – then shut up.

Jubal, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to have 5 minutes each morning to meditate. It’s difficult to control my thoughts but this exercise helps.