Category: 2025

Cross The Line – 1st August 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

we tell a
story
an illusion of control

a cold comfort
in mourning

lines drawn in sand

random; unplanned

rally the troops around
fighting to the death
for their story

til strangers
on familiar grounds
we used to call home

Inspired by the various border wars around the world and copying the syllable count from a previously published poem by Matthew Maitland, including the borrowing of the final stanza. The poem has since been made unavailable.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Don’t Go Expecting Perfection

Why ponder the existence of nuisance?
It’s holding you back from getting started
Best to make do with how things are
And take on the task wholehearted

Chancers – 15th July 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 4 Comments 
Hate is fun and truth is boring
The double-think tanks are rolling
The winners are always scoring
 to maintain social controlling

To hear is not as to listen
Words twist being misunderstood
Making a new world to christen
 that denigrates the greater good

Hate now truth so fun is boring
The doublespeak presses rolling
Spread the fires that have been storing
 the hatred of past extolling

Let’s start to listen more than hear
All problems are found with answers
Let’s not make this hate a career
 and so become the last chancers

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Doing The Right Thing Is Enough

Doing the right thing
Doesn’t need a return
Doing the right thing
Is all there is to learn

Fading Name – 5th July 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 6 Comments

I had another reminder that time is running out

Will there one day be a legend?

Is it for that I strive?

Nothing left here

No thing

Left




It seems that the further I go, the further back I get*

I’ve got shovels for deeper digs

But I won’t let you cry

Please shed no tears

For me

Now

A made-up form, lines of syllables; 14, 8, 6, 4, 2, 1
* appropriated from Mudhoney

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

No One Said It’d Be Easy

Nothing can deter the good from honour
Nothing will lure them into what is base
If doing good was easy, everyone would do it
Pleasure and power always need more space

Oh! No! Homo Deus! – 24th May 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

We stand alone on an empty stage,

with little truth and a lullaby;

Talking to ourselves, negotiating with no one

– the animal without any obligations.

Line 2 is appropriated from a Matthew Maitland poem (link lost) and the rest is paraphrased from Noah Yuval Harari’s Homo Deus

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Making Your Own Good Fortune

Good impulses and actions
And a well-tuned soul
Bring you satisfactions
And isn’t that the goal?

The Key Is Art – 11th April 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

An erasure poem using text from the condescending and unreadable “The Chinese Have A Word For It” which I duly decided was only worth cutting up and using for this purpose.

I don’t know how to get WordPress to format text the way I would like so have added a picture at the top of the post, followed by the original text and below, text that can be cut and paste.

Key in the war
500 business principles
grasped the bible

When derisive laughter
import a reflected perspective

The appropriate war requires the management art
vital death; the road essential
the under thirteen

Each one is vital

success;

The principle planning
first that can

While equal on flex
it makes shapes
ground by enemy
as constant war
constant; the victorious divine

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

If You Want To Learn, Be Humble

It’s impossible for a person to begin
To learn what they think they already know
If one wishes to get to the bottom of everything
It’s time to make a start on letting go

The Nine – 23rd March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Stuck in the lobby with Socrates
There’s no wifi, it’s kinda mid
A peace without joy, it’s no heaven
A torment for the untormented

Simps and himbos in eternal rizz
Cleopatra has lost control
With storms eternally buffeting
One step further down in the hole

The overstuffed couldn’t put the fork down
These foodies drowning in their slop
Cerberus’s claws and icy rain
Torment those who can never stop

Hoarders push boulders at each other
Nicolas Third forgot to share
Not enough hands to carry their wealth
Their futile labour gets nowhere

There’s toxic fights, twenty-four seven
This is Twitter but IRL
In the muddy waters of the Styx
The sullen gurgle down the swell

The unbelievers will be denied
Edgelords buried in flaming tombs
Stationed around the City of Dis
Farinata’s power consumed

Murderers boil in rivers submerged
Centaurs guarding the Phlegathon
Tyrants terrorised, contrapasso
Ever downward, the river’s run

Doomers in the forest are hanging
Trapped inside thorny bleeding trees
While harpies shriek and tear at them
Or chased by black dogs of disease

No water succours the blasphemers
The fiery sand forever burns
Eyes stitched open to the divine skies
Phlegaton flows towards new turns

Scammers, fakes and corrupt CEOs
The flatterers submerged in shit
Boiled in pitch or buried upside down
From panderer to hypocrite

Ultimate backstabbers, zero rizz
Satan’s chewing on the traitors
His three mouths full, a mukbang gone wrong
For treacherous perpetrators

In Antenora, a father wails
Gnawing the skull that sealed his fate
His children plead, one by one
A feast of love and burning hate

Yet Satan weeps, powerless and cold
Absent of love, absent of rage
From purgatory towards the stars
Through hell to a coming of age

Inspired by a little research after writing Through The Nine Circles. I haven’t read Dante’s Inferno and used DeepSeek to give me more information about it. However, I had been using that session of DeepSeek to write Gen Alpha bylines for sharing notes on Substack and so initially got information on the nice circles of hell in Gen Alpha speak! And so I ran with it, without overdoing it.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The Straightjacketed Soul

It’s easier to recognise the fool
Watching them make mistakes
Oblivious and blindly cool
To follies that our own hand makes

Surrounded By Lies – 19th March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

Lost life made bitter

It has made him devious

Eventually caught

leans toward evil

searching for an alibi

trapped in his own lie

Written for prompt #1 at the Chimeric Poetry Scavenger Hunt:
Write a Senryu that is also an Acrostic.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Timeless Wisdom

The cause of my irritation is within
This is a choice worth remembering
This wisdom still is, and always will be true
Because the cause of my irritation is not you

Singing In Your Honour – 15th March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

Inspired by this piece at Ask Molly, which I found via Maia’s Tiny Hearts here

I love the time that I didn’t love myself,
the past plays upon my mind;
I was too busy with pleasure to consider
what the future would find.

I wandered the quiet forests of imagination
waiting for everything to be mine;
Disappointment followed me there, to the tree
wishing to turn back time.

Every sigh a plea, the heartbeats heavy
when will my love find me here?
Building towards a crescendo, I found
what I wanted, too late to hear.

The sun was always hiding, slipping through
my fingers, clenched white in fists;
Missing the chance pleasure of the rain
even as it so casually persists.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The Present Is All We Possess

All that we possess – given to us all
A lifetime to impress – ‘now’ remains so small
Today is a gift – due to expire
Let it be the lift – leading to inspire