Tag: Palestine

Theological Alibi – 7th July 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 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

Mud And Sheepskin – 22nd June 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

With the first stones of the First Intifada,
I learned the rebuilding of my world
with thumbs in mud, not marble,
sheepskin stretched across olive tree twigs.

Brushes dabbed on UNRWA flour sacks,
ration-stamped ghosts bloom into orchards.
A boy with a door that still closes,
an olive tree outside, the settlers forgot to cut.

Art as resistance, refusing erasure,
imagination with its back to the wall,
signing its name in cracked clay and smoke,
the skies hanging from barbed wire.

Every scene is saying no
every line a road I’m not allowed to walk,
every frame a document, a moment,
steady as a heartbeat in the flour dust.

Inspired by the artists of Palestine, making the most of what they have left available to them.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The Definition Of Insanity

Carrying on against the grain
Hope is not a strategy
Doing the same thing again and again
The definition of insanity

The Puncturers – 11th June 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 21 Comments 
legalised punctures
the symbols of
burnt stars
branded flesh and
bloodied devices
gut percussion
a pound of flesh
punctuated
without protection

pound
   pound
      pound
those punctilios
until they come around
where bodies of evidence
may no longer be found

everything is legitimate

Shared with dVerse Poetics – unpunctuated and inspired by the (as yet unwatched) Bodies of Evidence documentary

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Just Don’t Make Things Worse

Anger and grief only add more fuel
So stop digging that hole you’re in
Negative energy is the devil’s tool
To ensure you keep on digging

He Is Here – 3rd June 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 20 Comments

Horns no longer hidden
Pointed at yellow lines
Crossing them is forbidden
Stripped to their confines

Facing rape with guns
Exterminating daughters and sons
Behold the chosen ones

Horns are now revealed
Along with exposed tails
Evil no longer concealed
The devil is Israel’s

Shared with dVerse Quadrille #249 – horns and inspired by the actions taken by the IDF against the flotilla activists who were kidnapped in international waters while trying to bring aid to the Palestinians who are, ironically, being genocided by Israel. Sorry if you don’t like the message. I don’t like the inhumanity and I will protest through my poetry.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

It Is Well To Be Flexible

What’s wanted may not be possible
Nor your second choice or third
It is well to be humble and flexible
To be a human being of our word

A Single Dusty Shoe – 26th April 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

Written for GloPoWriMo 2026 Day 25:
Write your own poem in which you use at least three metaphors for a single thing, include an exclamation, ruminate on the definition of a word, and come back in the closing line to the image or idea with which you opened the poem.

When the rains came that day
  you had to wonder why?
What had you done to deserve
  these questions from the sky?

School was quietly cancelled
  and you had to entertain
ideas to the innocent
  that you were unable to explain.

A story folded mid-sentence,
  the page torn from the first chapter;
a question…
  that will never reach an answer.

Somewhere, a plastic tricycle
  and a single dusty shoe
are waiting as a reminder
  of the happiness you knew.

It’s a goddamn genocide!
  Yet it’s constantly denied –
On its way to a holocaust
  from which you cannot hide.

No – it’s a goddamn genocide!
  One day to be repaid
By ghosts of all those glass bells broken
  when the rain returns – afraid.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

There’s Nothing Wrong with Being Wrong

No one has ever been harmed by the truth
Only those who dwell in ignorance and deceit
Have we learned nothing since our youth?
Admitting error is not admitting defeat

Negative Space – 4th March 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 5 Comments

This write is based on the idea that Gaza and the Palestinians are not victims of hate, but because evil loves destruction, they are, in fact, the victims of love. The art metaphor was inspired by the Red Hand Files #355

Another beautiful day dawns in Gaza
as he admires his sculptures

victims of his love

Polishing rough edges
after careful, endless siege

Sulphur and ash pigments
splatter the canvas

Crushed concrete and tear gas
the rubble catches the morning sun
in negative spaces

The screams add new textures
to the palette

His meticulous love
crafting masterpieces
signed with an airstrike

His initials salt the fields

The critics gather
viewing from watchtowers
the tenderness in the demolition
the love in every line

In exhibition
his greatest work

entitled ‘Peace’

There are murmurs of great restraint
“the composition is heartbreaking”

Evil enjoys destruction
looks upon its work as art
with a curator’s pride

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Awareness Is Freedom

No slavery is more disgraceful
Than one which is self-imposed
Is it vanity or ignorance
That is keeping your eyes closed?

Sunset On Al Dera – 29th December 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 6 Comments
photo: Ibrahem Nabeel/Google Maps

I walked down the old, sandy wooden steps
to the beach
I had been here decades before
everything looked different
but the smell was the same
a salt that cleared the nose
and spits in your face
time
and time again

I remembered the flashing lights
reflected on the water
all the good cheer
the dream that this day will never end
up before the sun
patiently impatient
the horizons are soon to reveal the truth

…but
this Christmas
I wanna die
I’ve seen Satan and Jesus
in a crimson-bloodied sky
angel wings pummeling the city to dust

Shared with an AllPoetry.com contest by Bad Jonny, who gave us the italicised lines as starters. I decided to use both and link them.
30th Jan 2026 – Shared with dVerse OLN #400

Ma Khafiya Aatham – 29th October 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 14 Comments

Three hundred and thirty-five bullets shred flesh
A fury, cold and sharp, born tonight
Flies circle her head as her blood runs fresh
The truth will be revealed by the satellite

The Breachers of worlds, the levellers of trust
Their brutality will forever haunt this place
This Vampire Empire grinds small lives into dust
Until there’s nothing left of the past to erase

Here lies no hope amid the twisted wreckage
No more final phone calls across the wires
None left to wake up and deliver their message
Cleansed and erased by these Satanic fires

Ma Khafiya Aatham – The tip of the iceberg. The Breachers – the Israeli 52nd Armoured Battalion. The Vampire Empire – the Israeli 401st Brigade. Satan – Israel.

The Prettiest Apocalypse – 28th October 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 3 Comments

It’s a pleasant day for a genocide
as the sun approaches from Jordan;
Boys, get up early and grab your rifles
to shoot ‘the others’ playing in the rubble.

5 times a day, gathered for execution,

2 points from the front, 5 from the back!
Let them starve or teach our children torture

and the irony that lies become truths over 3000 years.

Let’s lunch together with a hand grenade

lobbed into a group of ladies gathering

to pick through the seeds we spilt,

spoiled by rats. Oh, happy days – let’s eat!

The apocalypse is prettiest in the afternoon

as the sun glints off the razor wire,

sipping wine from skulls plucked from the trash.

Let’s dance our way to the beaches!

If in the evening the blood has dried

let’s dust off those Yankee jets,

cheer for the chumped commander

for whom we never signed the receipt.

Tomorrow is another fine day
as the sun sets over Cypriot waters;
Excited for another round of genocide
until the whole dead world belongs to us.

So fucking angry…

And…

I asked ChatGPT to try to create an image based on this poem. Here’s the response:

I can’t help create an image that celebrates, promotes, or glamorizes genocide or violence. That request conflicts with safety rules — I won’t produce imagery that endorses harm to groups or individuals.

How ironic.