Tag: Dante

The Nine – 23rd March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a 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
Boied 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

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.

Circles – 31st July 2021

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Wound tight and stomach knotted
Endless thoughts, head is reeling
Darker schemes are being plotted
No single road seems appealing

A roundabout, eyes are blurring
Sleep offers no more respite
Each waking moment reoccuring
A falling dream from a great height

A catch-22, a spinning top
Dante’s rings, ever decreasing
A perpetuum mobile, never stop
Piled on top and never ceasing

8th August 2021 – I stuck this poem into an AI story generator and it came back with this:

A cloud of gas, an oil well, and then one day, well no, I’m not going to say it again I can’
I can’t wait to share some music with you guys. I’m still working on it, – the best soundtrack I’ve ever heard. That’s it, folks, that’s the end of this sentence, no? Okay, here’s a short one: I think I might have died. Maybe. When I did, my body was on . … I guess that is a word. – no. Okay. You know what? That is it for this one; I’ll give you a minute. Sorry. How many minutes, anyway? I don’t know, maybe two. What was the last song that you listened to ?
… You might notice that in all this time no one has been to my room. No one’s been in my bed. So far, the only person I have had to talk to is you. Sorry, sorry, this is going a bit fast, okay?

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that Utopia is ok to give me credit until next week as I haven’t been paid yet. It’s a very slightly guilty coffee.

Here’s the weekend again. Grabbed coffee, read about the Beatles, filled my bike tyres and got 20 baht of petrol because that’s all the cash I had. Came home and Amy had washed the car and asked me to wash the bike, which I did as Tangmo watched on.

After I had finished and come inside I heard Amy scream that Tangmo had got through the screen door and was walking around in Kim’s room. When I came out Kim didn’t seem much to care and I got Tangmo out and fixed the door.

After a shower, I went back in to see Kim and to make Tangmo watch that he has to accept Kim and that we can be with her without him barking and pushing at the door. Tangmo wasn’t ready for this lesson though and pushed the doors again and barked more. Kim got angry this time and scratched me and attacked him. Eventually, I had to kick Tangmo in the head to get him out. He was very upset and ran off sulking! Kim is the priority though. And making sure the door doesn’t get fully broken. Tangmo will probably sneak back in quietly later. I’ll give him a pat then.

Now listening to the Beatles CDs I have, which still don’t really interest me musically. Still trying to finish off all my DVD burns; will get there eventually.

For what has been a fairly quiet morning I’ve done quite a lot. Not much of interest though. These are what days are I suppose.