Literary Foxholes – 11th July 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

In opposition trenches
Writers formulate their opuses
Moulded around languages
The falling bomb focuses

Revealing who they really are
It’s the biggest battle of nerds
It’s all written across the page
Played in this theatre of words

Inspired by Existential Comics #632

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The Start-Up Of You

Attending to improvement, day by day
You’re in the business of building
Your company is more than play
But your whole life you are gilding

My poem Under The Cover got published at the Edge of Humanity magazine

The Conjuring – 10th July 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment 
The first happy inhale -
a lifetime later, the sigh
    - the last sad exhale.

Avoiding all enquiries,
attempting to postpone the inevitable,
    substituting love along the way.

Between the banks of life and death
there is the possibility to conjure
    the river of love.

Fumbling at the dark edges,
the flaming waters rise 

    only in certainty.

Why go on carrying dead things?
    Expectations kill dreams.

So be certain.

Come alive.

A paraphrasing of certain standout phrases from Chapter 3 (I think) of Osho’s Life, Love and Laughter

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Love The Humble Art

Thriving on the practice
Time is always made
Loving the process
Humble art will never fade

No Skin – 9th July 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment 
The shots come from the cheap seats
    unfiltered by positioning;
honest motives hold on to their receipts
    so you'd better get to listening.

Inspired by a David Elikwu newsletter.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The Philosopher King

We’re all leaders in one way or another
Philosophy leads us to be king
We can’t just make it up as we go
Our reason and ethics must sing

Indecision – 8th July 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Learning to choose is hard
– sometimes you’ll never start,
And to choose well is harder
– never mind going any farther.

Too many choices make
the easiest one to take.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Stop Monkeying Around

Who is responsible for your whining?
Even monkeys have more self-respect
You’ll find your character declining
From all the complaining you collect

Theological Alibi – 7th July 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 20 Comments

Let me show you what they assembled.

Lavender is an AI engine
that flags tens of thousands of Palestinian men for death.

The Gospel spits out more than 100 bombing targets a day—
names that once took military intelligence a full year to gather.

Where’s Daddy, the sick name of a tracker
that follows a man home,
then kills him there,
where his children are.

Twenty seconds.
Enough time for an officer to glance a target,
just long enough to see the shadow of a male.

This is not the fog of combat.
This is a factory.
Those who run it believe the land
was promised to them by God.

That is the sum that should stalk your sleep—
the slickest killing apparatus ever turned on a people,
operated by a state with a theological alibi.

The same trap is deployed against anyone who speaks up.
They tell the queer organiser:
those people would never stand with you.
They tell the feminist:
those people would never march for you.
The chorus does not shift.
Your compassion is wasted
because the dying do not echo your words.

A child should not need the correct ideology to deserve to live.

That is not a radical statement.
It used to be the floor.
The thing everyone agreed on
before we began means-testing
who deserves to live.

A child in Gaza did not script Europe’s antisemitism.
A family in Rafah did not run the death camps.

Yet they are paying the bill all the same—
in levelled streets,
in families,
in children.

Every major military on earth is studying what Israel has done in Gaza.
They are taking notes.

The manual being drafted in plain view
proves that you can kill at scale,
from a distance,
with a 20-second glance and
a holy text as a warrant,
and the world will watch and qualify and explain.

This poem is a paraphrase of an article that I failed to note the URL for but you can find information on Lavender, The Gospel and Where’s Daddy? here. It is sickening. Israel is a sick society, and for both Jews and Palestinians to remain safe, it needs to be destroyed.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Our Duty To Learn

Even after suffering so
Learning lights the way to go
The names and dates can be forgot
The moral lies within the plot

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

Now I Carry Matches – 4th July 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments 
wearing kindness
               as a shield
for the fear of being forgotten

performing happiness
               to keep the peace
for an uninterested audience

~ one hand clapping ~

setting things on fire
               keeping warm
an unappreciated sacrifice

demanding more
               to stoke the embers
until the field is full of ashes

low maintenance
               (badge of honour)
boundaries not asserted

a tool on the shelf
               cherished for function
once broken, to be forgotten

no longer building a house
               just settling accounts
....

raising the price
               putting value in place
a privilege reset

silence as an answer
               is not absence
a space to be filled with love

bridges to the past
               of approval over need
               of popularity over peace
               of convenience over comfort
need the river set on fire.

This poem is inspired by Bella Smith’s If You Think I’ve Changed, You’re Right and the title is taken directly from there.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Protect The Flame

Protect your own good in all that you do
For everything else take what is given
It’s a small flame burning inside of you
And it needs to right fuel to keep living

The Cipher – 3rd July 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Today, I will grow more grass,
though I still don’t understand it,
but that’s a thrill for me to say
I don’t know.

Let’s play a game of guessing
and say the outrageous ideas aloud.
Maybe today, we’ll crack the code
together.

Inspired by Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, 6 [A child said, What is the grass?] and this analysis of poetry in general by Isaac Kolding, from which I learned that grass was another name for poetry. I seem to be riffing on the idea of ‘I don’t know’ often these days.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Turn Have To Into Get To

Align your will with whatever happens
So nothing happens against your will
All those things you get to do
The mundane ‘have to’ ‘gets to’ be a thrill

Hollow Objectives – 2nd July 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

With infinite entertainments
And food delivered to the door
In climate-controlled environments
We couldn’t wish for anything more

But all with meaning begins to fade
We writhe with agony under the weight
Of an existential crisis made
As we focus on our internal state

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

On Duty and Circumstance

Amongst opportunities and obligations
So many questions will arise
Duty is found on solid foundations
So circumstance is never a surprise