Author: shaun tenzenmen
Australasian DIY music specialist and practising poet, amongst other things
Life is being too good,
From Zero – 3rd December 2025
I was zero before I was one
I will become
Zero once again
When my time is done
I was black before the light
I will be black
When the time is right
To go back
Now I must do
As I must do
Shared with dVerse Quadrille #237 Zero
Kumbaya! – 2nd December 2025
In the quest for effortless success,
we’re hugging ourselves to death;
With the biggest and best kumbaya,
it’s self-help for the self-obsessed.
These lines were random thoughts at one time or another that seemed to work well together. The first line is from Reena Saxena (as linked).
No Cheese – 1st December 2025
Justify the killing of monsters:
The monsters we made!
Clothed and fed in better times
when we were getting paid.
“Civilising the savages” with murder
until the rest submit;
We always find a reason
to get away with it.
Another classic Existential Comic (#617)
Thermal Drift – 30th November 2025
When did it get cold in here?
Last week I didn’t even need a t-shirt!
Morning showers filled with fear
Shocked, wide awake and alert
I’m waiting for the sun to rise and assert
Shared with dVerse – Spanish Lira
Things Got In The Way – 29th November 2025
Inspired and paraphrased from the start of this post at Spinning Visions.
5th Dec 2025 – Shared with dVerse OLN #397 as this one didn’t get many eyes yet.
We used to sing on the sidewalks,
pen crazy slogans on the back of our hand,
rambled on philosophically,
ignorant of all that the future had planned.
Then came the thinking, as others pointed out
when confronting everything we’d say;
we didn’t realise that we knew who we were
until too many things got in the way.
We Strive – 28th November 2025
Survive
We have survived
and so we will go on
through thick and thin, it’s in our blood
’til death.
A cinquain written for Ronovan’s Cinquain Challenge #28
Tiny Town – 27th November 2025
This is the town that time forgot,
and GPS no longer works;
The place that never moved forward;
residents full of quacks and quirks.
Within its limits, you are cornered;
this is the town that time forgot;
With its rituals, no one questions;
this is a map without a dot.
Roads that leave town are suggestions,
the words are full of many paths;
This is the town that time forgot;
always the same in photographs.
Rare visitors soon lose the plot;
the centre is just out of shot;
One day, its history just stopped;
this is the town that time forgot.
Written for the Chimeric Poetry Scavenger Hunt:
write a Quatern with a Chain Rhyme.
The Threat – 26th November 2025
Knowing where to find it,
to chase on soft shores;
to follow in dark rooms;
to tempt with promises.
A game of attraction,
a one-shot
irreversible play.
A butterfly in a too-tight fist;
the memory,
just a handful of smoke;
a shapeless inspiration;
a vile threat of possession.
The capture demands a sacrifice,
laid at your feet,
never to fly again.
Inspired by Chekhov’s play The Seagull
No More Morons – 25th November 2025
So, General William Rousseau
guarantees genuine freedom
with coercion by questioning!
It is education or death!
A choice made for utopia!
I would have been shot, too. Inspired by Existential Comics #604
1994ever 