Category: 2024

To Wake Up Before The Long Sleep – 4th December 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Were you true to yourself? Did you honour your dreams?
Did the choices you made mean what it means?
Did your daily bread fulfil all your desires?
Do you have time left to enjoy what inspires?

Did you suppress your thoughts to keep the peace?
Are you bitter withholding, without any release?
Is there anyone left now to hold your hand?
Were friendships gone what you had planned?

Now you’ve concluded happiness is a choice
But it’s too late now for your youth to rejoice
Your life had possibility, as good as it gets
Your heart is aching with these dying regrets

This Is Not Disneyland – 3rd December 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 7 Comments

One person’s Thanksgiving
Is often another’s mourning
We cannot turn back time
To present ourselves a warning

A promise to be kept
And treaties not to be broken
Communities of peace
Only words of love are spoken

Thank and pray to your gods
Whether the land or in the air
The family together
Brings their humanity to bear

Would we turn back the time
To share the freedom with others?
Give up some pumpkin pie
For all our sisters and brothers?

Shared with Reena’s Xploration Challenge #358 – How would you like to celebrate Thanksgiving?

Round Holes – 30th November 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 9 Comments

Often bewildered
A cultural disconnect
I don’t belong here
I don’t belong anywhere
A choice I made long ago

Another planet
Aliens walk among us
A sideways side-eye
Weird welcomes may be hiding
Daggers and fists held in check

Heads down and bum up
The square pegs will never fit
Scared of the unknown
A slow assimilation
Under cover of the night

Who am I to say?
I’m not one but the other
Out in the wide-open
Searching for a hole to hide
Keep quiet, wait for my moment

It’s us versus them
Until accommodated
Compelled to fit in
Or stay along the margins
Til my tribe reveals itself

Often bewildered
Aliens walk among us
Scared of the unknown
Searching for a hole to hide
Til my tribe reveals itself

A garland tanka shared with the Moonwashed Weekly Prompt – Otherness

In Opposition – 27th November 2024

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 6 Comments

Defined by dualities
A refusal to conform
There’s no moral dilemma
Opposition being born

What sacrifices are made
Challenging the status quo
Protest against injustice
Opposing the mainstream show

Countering counterculture
The margins are underground
Narrative struggles remain
Where opposition is found

The conflict of one’s desire
Families beggar belief
Carving out personal faith
Opposition brings relief

Shared with Poets and Storytellers United – opposite concepts