Author: shaun tenzenmen

Australasian DIY music specialist and practising poet, amongst other things

Still Dreaming – 4th March 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Listen to the old man talk
as if he’s going to live forever,
still making plans for tomorrow

Looking for a lost lightheartedness,
finding it within, when all around
is filled with a musty sorrow

In his heart, his dreams are held,
a spritely sage of memories;
youth is wasted on the young

While the bitter lemons waste
turning into twisted leather;
each day his new life begun

You Can’t Wash It Away – 2nd March 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 6 Comments

Shared with dVerse Tuesday Poetics: The Four Elements – my chosen element being earth.


The blood spills to dampen the desert;
a dusted red mochi forms.
These plains become a fertile crescent
once more.

The storm forms, a raining of boots;

Mud made men without meaning – cold earth
enveloped those troops.


A coward hides to snipe;
pap, put, pup – he spits.


Thunderfire singes the old roots
before boats rise from underground;
where seeds now drown
in the red-rushed dirt of oblivion


The bones of the buried found
haunt forever those lost in the victory
amongst the deadly bloom together

ตามสบาย – 1st March 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

I told her ‘It’s up to you’
She said ‘That’s damn right!’
Yet she knows not what to do
It’s always fight or flight

And so it was she ran
Too immature to explain
Until her awakening began
And she’s welcomed back again

A real conversation I had a couple of years ago with rebel student Feije, who subsequently left my school for elsewhere but I discovered yesterday that she will come back for grade 10. I liked her feistiness and stayed in occasional contact with her.
Shared with Moonwashed Weekly Prompt – writer’s choice.

No Individual – 24th February 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 6 Comments

I understood it

At least, I thought that I did

Just an illusion

This haiku was inspired by this quote:

Even the feeling of having understood is likely to lead one into a sense of illusion because the individual thinks he has found something to impart to others, but there is no individual.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

I’m still contemplating the complexities of the idea that there is no individual, because, despite feeling that there is, deeper down I seem to understand that there isn’t.

SpaceBeat – 23rd February 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 4 Comments

time and space make melodies
soulful sounds become sublime
beginnings of memories
ear-worm-holes of our spacetime

Shared with No Theme Thursday (picture prompt) and using the form Ae Freislighe:

  • Quatrain stanzas (4-line stanzas)
  • 7 syllables per line
  • Lines 1 and 3 rhyme together, but they rhyme as three syllables (xxa)
  • Lines 2 and 4 rhyme together as two syllables (xb)
  • The final syllable, word, or line of the entire poem should be the same as the entire poem begins (the poetic term for this is dunadh)