Tag: poetry

Coconuts On The Corner – 8th August 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Blue clad and behatted
Tending to the rice
Determined yet superstitious
Calves sold half price
Gnarled hands tie knots
Stakes hammered into earth
Mothers, nose-ringed, stuck
Appraised of the markets worth
A slower circle of life
The farmer or the cow
Waiting for the rain to stop
Yet enjoying it right now
The cultivated garden grows
On any patch of dirt
Tuppence for every pumpkin
Surely doesn’t hurt
Buffalo poop now sundried
On the corner, sold in bags
Every family in the valley
Desires to shed their rags
The lady with her eggs
The boys grilling fish
Coconut smoothies, ice cold
Or any other drink you wish
The dust blurring teary eyes
As the sun pounds down again
Hang that old washing out
Before the returning rain

8th August 2023 – The coconut stall has gone now and the area cleaned up with some sheds knocked down and the remaining building converted into a small eating space which has also closed down already!

There is no sin in being wrong. The sin is in our unwillingness to examine our own beliefs, and in believing that our authorities cannot be wrong.

Neil Postman

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to get another holiday for two days. I can watch the football at my leisure today.

My Rats – 7th August 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

My rats, my rats, my little gutter rats
We ran together, we released the bats
Our bondage brigade marched ever on
We instinctively knew who was the clever one
With cider right beside her bag of glue
Hellzapoppin as all the young savages dü
On mattress castles, the princess and the pee
And stinking dogs shit wherever they be
No glamour in this clamour drenched in sweat
We know we grow to be the best ones yet
D. cried about courage, and soon he was dead
If the man doesn’t get you, he’s always in your head
Nuclear ghosts haunted all our youth
Marching in millions seeking some truth
The sham in 69 was still in 79 too
We loved in vain but knew that love was true
And so those glories now dare not be repeated
Angry eyes glared, “ever feel like you’ve been cheated?”
That revolution sparked is now a faded glory
Who now to stop the world with their own story?

People’s opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration.

Bertrand Russell

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful Amy got back to Sydney safely and is happily amongst her friends there again.

The Same – 6th August 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

We’re really not so different
The country and the city
The air to breathe we share
To poison it is the pity
We’re really not so different
The north and the south
We’re all scared that one day
We’ll be living hand to mouth
We’re all not so different
The red and the blue
Let’s shake hands after the game
If it’s the last thing we’ll do
We’re all not so different
The dead and the living
One’s life is given
And another’s is still giving
We’re all not so different
The gods and the believers
All capable of miracles
Or victims of deceivers
We’re all not so different
The rich and the poor
Both struggling to understand
What we’re struggling for

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.

Dostoevsky

Cave Words – 5th August 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 2 Comments

In a world of its own
Adjacent to meaning
In a place of potential
Thoughtful gleaning

For there lies a greater truth
Just beyond our understanding
A song has its own life
Awe and wonder in tension demanding

Vibrating words hold a promise
A metaphoric form concealed
Trusting to intuition
That someday will be revealed

Sometimes truth is too severe
To even live upon the page
So take this poetic radiance
As your courage to engage

About 90% of these words were pilfered from Nick Cave and his Red Hand Files in a response to a question about lyrical meaning.
9th May 2024 – Submitted to Weekly Prompts Wednesday Challenge – Intuition

If you kill a cockroach you are a hero, if you kill a butterfly you are bad. Morality has aesthetic standards.

Nietzsche

No Body Required – 3rd August 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

An entertainment to end all others
Viewers left zombied gibbering wrecks
Weaponised for controlling populations
Shoulders hunched until snapping necks
Bodies broken boxed in the matrix
Life supported until accounts drained
A no one dies a nobody death
Disposed and destroyed, existence unexplained

Human life is not sacred until all life is sacred to humans.

Doc Dart

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to be able to handle changing situations quickly and be able to manage my expectations.

The Week That Was – 14th October 1979

Red Lines Drawn – 2nd August 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Crazy colonialists came
Before they left again
Revoked rights remain
Creating wars the same
Arbitrary lines drawn
To ancient enemies sworn
Peoples, ripped and torn
Nations divide in scorn

‘Freedom’ is nothing more than the leash on which we allow the masses to run. They do not want to be free.

Pat Mills (?), Third World War, Crisis Magazine

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that Amy spent a day preparing meals for me to freeze and eat later.

The Week That Was – 7th October 1979

The Chases – 1st August 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 1 Comment

Even amongst all the confusion
Peace can be found in all places
Don’t fall for the constant illusion
That life is only about the chases

The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.

Oscar Wilde

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful to live near enough to shops that cover about 90% of my day-to-day needs.

The Week That Was – 30th September 1979

Own Goal – 31st July 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

In a carefully worded statement
Facts were twisted and obscured
The lines crossed were blurred
And both sides eventually demurred
One step forward, two steps back
Holding hands, stepping into a hole
A status quo must be maintained
Until someone scores an own goal

You are a human being, not a human doing.

Ryan Holiday

Gratitude Journal

I am so happy and grateful that our little car is healthy enough to get us to Chiang Mai and back on a quick turnaround trip. Good health to you, Almy.

The Clown Interrogator – 30th July 2022

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

A master manipulator
And a dreadful instigator
Loving the illusion
Causing most confusion
Winning a war of the word
Spinning til the vision is blurred
A clown interrogator
A comforting instigator
The script premeditated
Defences incinerated
Winning is all that matters
For those madder than hatters

You’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour.

J.D. Salinger