Tag: dVerse

Few Feathers – 13th March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 16 Comments

I’ll never say that I miss you,

the bird that left few feathers for my pillow,

an ache I will never confess,
but whoever runs their fingers along my bones 

will feel your name etched on each one 

with a cornerstone of soiled sentiments.

This poem is really a collaboration, with only a little input on my part. Lines 1, 4, 5 and 6 were written by EC at the erroneous choices blog, in a short piece titled ‘lies we live under’. It stood out to me as a brilliant, poetic little paragraph that I thought I could use the idea, along with the last two words, as an alliterative full stop. EC was gracious enough to allow me to use it in full and so here it is, with my two added lines, shared for the dVerse quadrille prompt – bird.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

One Day It Will All Make Sense

It seemed like a disaster
But became a lucky break
We are a terrible forecaster
But reason makes no mistake

My Only Friend – 8th March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 23 Comments

Your trinkets, they light up my eyes,
gifts glowing through the smooth ice.

You open my world to all weather,
and guide me along every river.

Tethered to your familiar voice,
your songs, a loyal choir.

You carry my family‘s smiles,
and lift me when I am tired.

Amidst your million reminders,
you are my quiet conductor.

What would I hold without you?
In my hands, you are the truth.

Shared with dVerse MTB – couplets and half rhymes. The title is inspired by Aussie band God and their song ‘My Pal’ with the haunting line “You’re my only friend……and you don’t even like me.”

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Don’t Unintentionally Hand Over Your Freedom

Would you give your body for someone else to use?
So why give your mind to any crook that comes along?
We don’t let people cause us physical abuse
Train and protect our minds to be mentally strong

No Encores – 1st March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Not a new metaphor by any means but this is my take on the theatre of life. Another poem, belatedly, written for Punam’s dVerse prompt of using opening lines to books as closing lines to poems. This one is “Here is a small fact: You are going to die” from The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.

Act 1, Scene 1:

Scriptless and shoved onstage mid-scene,
hot lights glaring;
applause and judgment circling
for lines never rehearsed.

And yes,
every actor exits,
no matter how fierce their monologue.
A trapdoor beneath every spotlight.

The curtain falls without exception.

Act 1, Scene 2:

Between the acts of this cabaret
there is that strange, unchoreographed stretch;
where the stage lights hum
and the lines grow thin in our hands.

And those unscripted pauses,
those missed cues and improvised lines…?
They are only the bright, temporary glare,
the hush before applause or silence,

Act 2, Scene 1:

and the quiet truth
that for a moment,
against your choosing…

you were here
in the light.

Act 2, Scene 2:

You owe the audience nothing.
You are simply here, for a brief while,
and your time is yours to fill
or to simply endure, as you must.

No obligation,
only the raw,
temporary fact of existence itself.

Act 2, Scene 3:

Birth – a brutal act that makes me wonder, ‘why?’

Finale:

Here is a small fact:
you are going to die.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Where Philosophy Begins

Exercise reason, question your beliefs
Consider everything taken for granted
Take the first steps towards inner peace
With the seeds, just yesterday, planted

The Song Sparrow – 26th February 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 20 Comments

Shared with dVerse Poetics Tuesday – use a classic opening line as an ending line. I chose Charles Bukowski’s Ham On Rye, ‘The first thing I remember is being under something.’ I’m not familiar with the story but I ended up with the idea of Hank waking from his dreams and memories of the night before.

I was terrified, my sweaty hands shaking
a brittle-boned cold heat fever
a pillow headache, suffocating
on a bilious, swollen tongue

thick with last night

smoky lungs, coughing iron filing lumps
of congealed blood
bitter, soggy pills in a pail.


She had shimmered in the weak light
through the foggy frame
whispered strawberries through rotten teeth
my ears are catching golden secrets
often repeated on other nights
in other city lights


As the working men clocked out
boots echoing toward small kitchens
a small brown bird tapped rhythmically
at the window
to bring my relief to an end
and the first thing I remember
is being under something.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

To Each His Own

When you give a piece of your mind, it’s refused
Just as you would do when verbally abused
No one feels better, nothing is achieved
No point to giving, if nothing is received

μακάριος – 25th February 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 14 Comments

Shared with dVerse Quadrille #242 – hunger
μακάριος (makarios) is the Greek word for blessed.

I would fill my hollow leg
with all the libraries’ best
To wave the wolves away
at my open doors

My fire burns through these leaves
in cultivation of curiosity

Grafting facts, pruning the fat (…)

Blessed are they which do hunger
until elegant sufficiency.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The Smoke And Dust Of Myth

Castles of sand are soon erased
The peasant buried next to the king
To our emotions we become enslaved
When in reality – it’s all just nothing

Held Tight – 21st February 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 22 Comments

Shared with dVerse MTB – No Answers

What does the silence want

with the chattering,

when it can’t be turned off?

Silent whispers squeezed in sweaty palms.


Have you ever held a question?


Where does the night go

after waiting so long

for its anticipated arrival?

No respite from the dirtied village dogs.


Has the oak memorised the lightning

bearing the scars, weeping?

The wounds wail as the wind

runs its fingers down its bark.


What name is murmured

on the tip of a sooty tongue?


If my heart were a house,

who keeps opening doors

that were never closed?

Fateful Feeling – 11th February 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 13 Comments

parenthesis

spring approves wholly
lady, my flowers, blood kisses
will to wisdom, a life a fool pays

swear by syntax
this fate of paragraph

for my world pays
better never feeling the things

first is
blood kisses, my lady, flowers
death approves wholly

parenthesis

Shared with dVerse Quadrille #241 – flowers. A poem formed only using words from e.e. cummings ‘since feeling is first’.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Hero Or Nero?

The king attends to honour and health
While the tyrant overindulges their wealth
Can you counter the many temptations
That gather to trouble your foundations?

Liker – 7th February 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 13 Comments
Like a single soggy cornflake left in the bowl, you’re a disappointing ending.
Like a pubic hair on a hotel soap, you’re an intimate violation, offending.
Like a hiccup in a eulogy, you break the moment with awkward spite.
Like a sock perpetually damp from a leaky boot, you’re a stinker, all right!

Like a wet handshake in a steam room, you’re a clammy compromise.
Like a toothache in a novocaine dream, you’re a dull, persistent surprise.
Like the squeak of polystyrene on a filling, you grate on my very nerves.
Like a vibrator in a library, you’re as deeply inappropriate as deserves.

Like the tang of a coin pulled from a wishing well, you’re metallic and tainted with bad taste.
Like a vulture circling a car with a flat tyre, your hope is morbidly misplaced.
Like the fungus on a neglected potted plant, you’re a sign of a deeper rot.
Like a terrible sixties movie remake, you are from the land that time forgot.

Like the last roll of toilet paper, clinging by a perforation, your support is single-ply-thin.
Like a fire alarm test during a nap, you’re a shrill and scheduled ruin.
Like a cigarette break in a downpour, you’re a miserable, fleeting treat.
Like the ambient laugh track on a cancelled sitcom, your joy is canned and obsolete.

Like a participation trophy made of corroded tin, you celebrate an empty try.
Like a pixelated pornographic blur, you’re where the details go to die.
Like a mayfly with seasonal affective disorder, your brief life is also glum.
Like a jellyfish beached and melting into grit, you’re a failed, gelatinous crumb.

Like the X-Ray of a swallowed wedding ring, you’re a costly, internal mistake.
Like a pigeon with a gammy leg, you inspire the pity of a nagging headache.
Like the click of an empty water pistol in a standoff, you’re an anticlimactic threat.
Like the silence after a whoopee cushion at a funeral, you’re a joke no one can forget.

Shared with dVerse Poetics – Similes! This write is very much inspired by John Cooper-Clarke’s Twat, which you must read here.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Fear Is A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

Succumbed to what was dreaded,
is it only the paranoid who survive?
Self-control keeps us level-headed
and able to continue to thrive.

Not My Beach – 29th January 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 5 Comments

Pixels, faith, dust

Beaches I will never swim,
blue and bright;
Mock me with your gourmet food
under the moonlight.

You thrust a quiet knife in
with each sunset post;
As I eat my thinning stew
with old dry toast.

Share if you must

Shared with dVerse Quadrille #240 – trip. I didn’t use the word ‘trip’ in this, but ‘sunset’ could be easily replaced with ‘trip’s’. I prefer it this way, though. This poem is a reference to complaints about people posting their holiday photos online without regard for how that might affect others. I personally don’t know how I feel about this either way but that could be because I have been in a position to be able to experience beautiful beaches and gourmet food.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Keep It Simple

Everything can be as simple as said
This problem may be your last
The complexities are all in your head
How soon it has all passed

Born Into It – 25th January 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 20 Comments

Nothing could be plainer than the things that have been done
And there can be no mystery in what is yet to come
It’s now that howls at nothing; It’s now that runs and hides
It’s now that winds its spineless coils and slithers out of sight

On my arrival, all I learned was from those gathered round
I had no memory of my past, no future to be found
Books that were given to me only spoke of victory
To be treated as our truth and proof of our history
When I began to question things, the lies soon followed on
All the wars, what were they for, and did they help anyone?
It seemed that all this time had been wasted to the extreme
One step forward and two steps back, I realised I had been
Born into a damage that’s real and worn by everyone
Nothing could be plainer than the things that have been done

The cause and effect are forever flowing through our lives
We all know how it will end and how no one will survive
Shocked by our own ignorance, we clutch at the old pretence
Trapped within the falsehood of our manufactured suspense
The echo arrives before the shout has even begun
With the dreams of our past, we believe we’ve already won
Storm warnings were ignored because the sky was always blue

This wasn’t the future but the past that was coming true
Here we go again and again, it’s all been said and done
And there can be no mystery in what is yet to come

We no longer finish thoughts before we get distracted
We’re just a character in our own game to be acted
If we shout a little louder, the truth will be drowned out
No longer noble, it’s the animals that know more about
Survival means we must forget about turning the tides
We’re speeding towards the canyon in our dopamined rides
Now, we’ve made your bucket list, are we ready to defend
Our right to make sense of it all, and so not to pretend
When it all catches up, there will be less ladders than slides
It’s now that howls at nothing; It’s now that runs and hides

We’re sold maps as mazes, that’s why we can never be found
Always searching the skies for treasures buried underground
Blame is passed hand to hand, decisions forever deferred
Flexibility only bends its way to the absurd
Moral neutrality used as camouflage every night
Wraps us in complexities that took away all our fight
Rooms arranged to forget there was anything ever here
A never-ending spiral stairs watches us disappear
With a perfect avoidance, it can quietly dim the light
It’s now that winds its spineless coils and slithers out of sight

Shared with dVerse MTB prompt to write a glosa. My quoted lines (italicised) are taken from the song ‘Now’ by Nomeansno. Finding lines to work with was a challenge and the whole write took a fair few hours. I’ll struggle to get the song out of my head tonight as I go to sleep.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The Only Prize

The more things we desire
The more we have to earn
Freedom no longer stokes the fire
If more prizes are your concern