Author: shaun tenzenmen

Australasian DIY music specialist and practising poet, amongst other things

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)

Tell Yourself – 22nd February 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 29 Comments

Your mind believes what you tell it
So let’s fill it full of golden voices
til overcome and overrun – rejoices

Any trouble becomes easy to dispel it
Once you’ve given yourself the choices
Your mind believes what you tell it
So let’s fill it full of golden voices

Good or bad – now you can smell it
Understanding what the right choice is
Filter out unnecessary noises
Your mind believes what you tell it
So let’s fill it full of golden voices
til overcome and overrun – rejoices

An English Madrigal shared with dVerse and initiated by the attached picture from the Random Acts of Kindness Foundation as the form is often connected with themes of love.

Charlie Zero The Poet Music picks & Reviews #12 and my quick thoughts:

The Teskey Brothers – sounds like it is last century. Makes me think of Django Reinhardt a little. Also reminds me of a straight Fred Lane. Fred Lane fucks with this genre somewhat.

Steve Lacy – nothing against but who listens to this and when? What mood would you be in to listen to this? Kinda elevator/background music to me. It’s music that you don’t listen to.

Dabeull – No surprise that I’m not into this but the album covers are amazing and remind me of Toecutter and his take on Captain Ahab – this is fairly obscure reference to a memory of a Toecutter show in Sydney around 2006! I’d never heard Captain Ahab until just now trying to jog my memory. Their music is not similar at all to Dabuell!

Witch Egg – This is interesting. Has some Sunday morning vibes along with tripping out Friday 4am madness. A new one for me to check out more.

Lustmord – A familiar name but never heard before. This one doesn’t win me over.

Emptied Life – 21st February 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

It seems I held the knife
A body lays still and silent

The chattering of the skies
Question this emptied life

Here the fear arose inside

Hell showed itself red and hot

I must endure the torment
Am I insane or justified?


Emerging from the silence
I heard my own voice scream

Fists shaking at the sky

To question my own violence

No sense to the weeping
A twisted melody in song

The agony burns deep

To see this body sleeping


And in the quiet sown
A question from the skies

I stole a man’s life
That life was my own

This is basically a rewrite of the following text, which I can’t remember (and didn’t note) where it came from. It seems to be a sort of synopsis of Dante’s Inferno perhaps?

I killed a man. He is gone. He is silent. I heard many things from the fish of the ocean to the birds of the sky. Why I took his life I do not know. It was perhaps the phobia of which I trembled in fear. The petrifying portrait of a demon from the depths of hell. I may be crazy. I may be right. But was I wrong? Then I heard it. “Why! oh! why!” I shrieked. “Why am I destined to be tormented by the demons of hell.” I screamed and yelled. Was it not yet? Was it here? I killed a man today. In a violent nature. Nothing makes sense. The weeping tears of gore. The symphony of smiles and laughter. The searing pain of death. Was it worth it? And from the fish in the ocean. And the birds in the sky. I took a man’s life. And that life was mine.