Tag: dVerse

All Manner Of Things – 27th June 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

The trepidation is acute
I ain’t got no motivation
Not even for a haiku
It’s verging on paralysing
But I must write for you

An ephemeral burst
of Fireblossom’s perfumes
these anxieties are
intrinsic word engines

Experimenting – to that motion
By stirring the pot, poets shirk
responsibility when it’s taboo

Sober rhythms revealing
something of my soul
I can scent intentions
but it’s also little wonder
I felt scared

The art blues of a job left undone,
of lucky fragments lacking sense,
is its own torment
zeroes sums to a dream unrealised

The coyote eats its own kind,
and fox of hell’s hidden rooms
turning creativity, so cunning,
into wildflowers of a beautiful war

After all that digging, in the weeds
are heroes of the noblest contest

The lilies, finest of them all
in this soup of writing,
of punning, all manner of things
shall be well.

This is another old dVerse prompt that I kept in mind and returned to today. The idea is to write a new poem while weaving in fragments of an old poem, which must be kept in their original order. I decided to use my own short poem, ‘No Haiku’, italicised above. While thinking about this idea, I was also reading the latest (at the time) Red Hand Files #365, from which I noted down several nice phrases (in bold above) in Nick Cave’s reply, along with a quote (bold italic) from Julian of Norwich, utilised for the title and final line. I decided to try to work these two narratives together. Clean text below should be easier to read.

The trepidation is acute
I ain’t got no motivation
Not even for a haiku
It’s verging on paralysing
But I must write for you

An ephemeral burst
of Fireblossom’s perfumes
these anxieties are
intrinsic word engines

Experimenting to that motion
By stirring the pot, poets shirk
responsibility when it’s taboo

Sober rhythms revealing
something of my soul
I can scent intentions
but it’s also little wonder
I felt scared

The art blues of a job left undone,
of lucky fragments lacking sense,
is its own torment
zeroes sums to a dream unrealised

The coyote eats its own kind,
and fox of hell’s hidden rooms
turning creativity, so cunning,
into wildflowers of a beautiful war

After all that digging, in the weeds
are heroes of the noblest contest

The lilies of them all
in this soup of writing,
of punning, all manner of things
shall be well.

Cragg Vale Coiners – 17th June 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 16 Comments 
Bronze Age ashes sleep to the north,
Roman coins whisper further south.
Down in Cragg Vale, 
   King David the counterfeiter
   shaved gold by the candle's light.
The Mytholmroyd Bridge remembers
   flooding at the Gallows Pole
   and every hanged man's shadow 
   on York Tyburn stones.

Shared with dVerse Quadrille #250 – myth, where De Jackson sent me off to Wikipedia to search for information about Mytholmroyd, a place I’ve never heard of before.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Offence Or Defence?

Vulnerable to the whims of fortune
Offence is endlessly exhausting
Make a flexible, resilient defence
With philosophy, undistorting

Explainer – 13th June 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 11 Comments

We’d better make these rhymes easy
to read.
I’m getting tired, I must concede.
You see,
the Hendecastich is a pain
to write.
This nonsense written here, I might
explain
is a first attempt, a challenge
to try.
Now it’s done, let me say goodbye!

Written for dVerse: Legs Eleven.
The Hendecastich by Michael Fantina
11 line poem
1 stanza
alternates iambic feet of four (tetrameter) and one (monameter) (ignored!)
i.e. syllables: 8-2-8-2-8-2-8-2-8-2-8
rhyme scheme: abbacddceff

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Life Is A Battlefield

You must keep watch like a soldier
And do everything commanded
You’ve been stationed at a key post
Do not take this role for granted

The Better Man – 4th June 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 22 Comments

Something old

Something new

Something borrowed

Something blue

A sixpence in her shoe

Our friendship before the loan

Your silence after

My twenty dollars

The colour of your absence

Was worth it

Shared with dVerse Poetics. The ‘something borrowed’ line reminded me of the thought, ‘If you lend someone twenty dollars and never see them again, then it was probably worth it.’ I’ve tried to ‘marry’ the two ideas together here.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

This Is What We’re Here For

No one said life was easy – it’s true
No one said that it would be fair
It’s been done before – you can do it too
It’s tradition, and you’re the heir

The In And Out – 30th May 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 21 Comments 
breathing 

      is really more important than the other in-and-outs,

      and it’s never consciously thought about
      until the final one, in that stark white hospital



room 

      where family sits together, in quiet grief.

      the empty shell cleaned, now unfurnished of blood,

      getting smaller and smaller and that



is 

      the way we all go after being, our undoing.

      all the stories that made us us, told you what we were,

      all connected by these little words



only 

      to be forgotten, not amounted to much, there

      may be others but just a few who scratch

      their name somewhere, to be seen to break through,



born 

      under the lights, to brightly shine, made all

      fresh and new, furnished again with blood.

      a tiny temple, a clean empty shell



with 

      first breaths made together, familiar families

     sit again in familiar rooms, in familiar places.

      going home with more to include, in this



space

      where new blossoms bloom, grass grows,

      streets lights wander up to the mountain skies

      where new stories are born in the twinkle of an eye.

Shared with dVerse MTB: taking a fine line down where I have reused the line ‘breathing room is only born with space’ from my own poem from a couple of days ago, ‘On The Usefulness Of Emptiness’. This line is then used as a word acrostic and each stanza defines (somewhat, in my case) the meaning of the word. The prompt and my write was inspired by Laura Bloomsbury’s poem ‘An unbundling’.

I started writing this thinking about my mother passing away on the other side of the world from me. My cousin was there holding her hand as she took her last struggling breath after a couple of years of suffering with COPD. This then unconsciously took a turn towards the circle of life.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Working Hard Or Hardly Working?

Where is all the busyness taking you?
Is it really accomplishing very much?
You read and write, and work all night
Just to remain in place, as such

Let Them – 28th May 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 17 Comments 
Let them find the puddles
   you pointed out — 
   what you call falling,
   they call jumping.

Let them fly
   to figure out fortunes.

Let them forget my name
   and find their own.

Let me still be here
   but let me let them go.

Shared with dVerse Poetics – Let them

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The First Two Things Before Acting

In a short time, you’ll be nobody and nowhere
What’s the point in getting into a tizzy?
The task at hand, considered with care
Remember your purpose before getting busy

The Promenade – 21st May 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 12 Comments

The church’s pale pink spire points to the promenade-
an outstretched hand as a tether,
anchoring her flight to the earth’s quiet gravity,
binding the sky to the soil.

Half-forgotten prayers billow crushed amethyst,
flowing against the wind’s invisible current.
His smile outshines the sun’s shy rays.

Slumbering mosaic fields and houses stacked
like dominoes, waiting for the earth to topple toward
a dark anchor in a world of gentle hues.

A blue-leaved tree-dream sentinel,
drinking the sky,
red cloth weeping its flowers into the grass,
a ghost of faith,
rising from the green hills like a…

…like a spilt bouquet of memories, full of a soft joy.

Shared with dVerse – Chagall picture prompt

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

What Kind Of Boxer Are You?

What advantage from abandoning your pursuit
Of wisdom when this is why you trained?
Skin calloused by suffering bears the fruit
Of all the knowledge you’ve obtained

Ship To Shore – 20th May 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 26 Comments
circle of truth
Blockade on blockade-
   time to sell those stocks.
Unplug the power grid,
   set for financial shocks.

Peace is a boondoggle
   for the dogs of war.
The circle always completes
   from ship to shore.

Business means bucks,
   made at any cost
   until...
   all ledgered lost.

Shared with dVerse Quadrille #248 – dog and inspired after looking up the meaning of boondoggle and having seen the attached image this morning.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Quality Over Quantity

At the end there are no prizes
For having read every word ever printed
One good book, full of surprises
Reveals more than all that’s imprinted

The Archive – 14th May 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 19 Comments

Shared with dVerse Poetics – what does art say?

Piling up all the ideas,
they amounted to waste;

(shards of dreams)
chaotic,

overwhelming.

Sharp,
j-a-g-g-e-d thoughts,

piled in spires,

leaving only a little sliver of sky
– an unfocused sea of debris.

An ANXIOUS entropy,
SUFFOCATING senses

–

When the records are reviewed
these monuments refuse art.

All the good things erased,
all the bad things entombed –

given to the archive of Anthropocene obsolescence.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Our Well Being Lies In Our Actions

How quickly time erases such glories
Attached to the regard of others
Let your actions be your own stories
The right action is what one discovers

What Colour Was That? – 7th May 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 26 Comments

Shared with dVerse Poetics – rose. An ‘Afternoon Delight’ is a type of rose, apparently.

An afternoon delight used to be
a beer in a summer garden.
Music played through a window
with the sun hanging lazy into night.

Those tinted glasses of nostalgia
– what colour was that again?
Knowing that it may not be repeated
why continue to wish for it to be so?

As beer became a thing of the past
– a regret of wasted time,
an afternoon delight is a nap
now that the sun sets so quickly.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

How To Have A Good Day

I’ll give you a guarantee
If you want to have a good day
Do good things for free
And you’ll always feel this way