Into The Silence Known – 17th January 2026

A paraphrasing/re-write of the story Road to Jericho by Scrivener at Urbs Liminalis.

A body humming with the city’s dread,
days shrink to margins and murmurs.

A world of fragments, half-perceived,

a ghost drifting through wet gestures.

On cold steel, a reckoning of bone,
the tangled world falls away below.

Meeting the weight of life, welcoming it like death,

the distant galaxies, quiet as confession.

A shapeless breath, braided soft with prayer,
the current flows into the silence known.
So the heaviness learned to float,
stillness threads through the trembling puddles.

Into the vastness, mercy arrived without knocking,
healed with the strange truth of being seen.
Something uncharted unfurled inside,
a distant glimmer now whispered in the night.


Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Reboot The Real Work

Paralysed by the fear of failure
You procrastinate to begin
Everything follows when you get to work
To lose is to learn, and to learn is to win

A Free Fool – 16th January 2026

Chained to the shadows of reality, dancing on the wall

The prisoner is set free from ignorance
To see the truth that it was never real at all

Returning to the shadows and facing ridicule
Freedom is just a philosophical fancy
There is little difference between the fooler and the fool

A cherita shared with W3 #194 – prompt word: cave and channelling Plato’s Cave.


Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Never Do Anything Out Of Habit

All our old ideas are in a box marked ‘habit’
They must be true but we’ve forgotten why
Our rote behaviours lead to mindlessness
And so it came to be as the time went by

Sacred Profanity – 15th January 2026

God, I’ve got a nose to pick with you.
Are you listening to my angry prayer?
A few fucks in front of the altar?
It’s not like you’ve never heard me swear.

My reverent heresy is born from
The institution blindly followed.
To commit their violence in your name
Fed on half-truths, easily swallowed.

Shared with Tanka Tuesday – oxymoron but mine is just a nine-syllable quatrain. I got my challenges mixed up.


Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Peace Is In Staying The Course

Riding the waves of acceptance and rejection
Tranquillity does not wander in every direction

To Rise – 14th January 2026

Shared with dVerse Quadrille #239 – smile, which immediately made me think of the Fall and so I went investigating the lyrics of their album containing the titular song. The italicised words are taken from various songs from the album Perverted By Language.

Repetitious history
Disease-ridden southern spectres
To fall, to rise again

Back to trade, back to barter
War is over with no shots fired

Undone, the strife-knot
For it’s…
The death of the dimwits
That makes US smile

Global majority
Once perverted by language
Definitive


Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Cut The Strings That Pull Your Mind

Fear, suspicion and desire all may beg
For your time and attentions
A spark may be lighting the powder keg
To blow up your pretensions

At Gethsemane – 12th January 2026

Incomplete, abandoned,
we yearn with our five senses;
Midnight-to-midnights found lacking;
universal consequences;

Aching for the beautiful and true,
filling the abyss with stones
God no longer answers
to the rattling of bones.

Inspired by this Red Hand File


Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

The One Path To Serenity

This morning, the sun rose without my asking
Before I lunch, I chose the freshest vegetables
In the afternoon came an uninvited guest
I trust that in the evening, a cool breeze will come

AI Socrates – 11th January 2026

Inspired by this post at Existential Comics that features an AI Socrates! I recommend giving it a try and posting your results in the comments.
(Actually, on review, Socrates is such an asshole that he just keeps repeating himself. He refused to write a poem with me.)


Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

If You Want To Be Unsteady

Seek the cave only for shelter
Peace must be found amongst your stresses
Running from problems is no answer
Make your choices and judgments your successes

Mum’s Motto – 9th January 2026

Here we go again, around the sun

and my guts are giving me grief.


Can I make it to the end

of the year? Or even

the end of the week?


Grin and bear it!

Mum’s motto.


She’s gone

now.

A nonet about the new year, shared with W3 #193


Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

What We Control And What We Don’t

Opinion, choice and desire are ours
Free, unhindered, unobstructed
While our body, position and reputation
Are all too easily disrupted

The Editorial – 8th January 2026

you always knew I held the knife to you
only a matter of time
before I bled our hearts

~ but I’m editing my biography in real time ~

when the gardenia’s perfume reached my nose
a vague memory stirred within
and I let out a sigh

A kimo puente for Tanka Tuesday – new beginnings


Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Seeing Our Addictions

Compulsions become addictions
Chipping away at the soul
Clouding over clarity
Can you exercise self-control?

The Bamboo Samurai – 7th January 2026

There’s a demon flame inside his heart
He spends all his energy to contain
The warmth will spread light in the dark
Knowing that what’s said will remain

He communes with the cats curled up cold
In the snow, that’s where children will play
The dogs are cautiously cool to the fire
Only a fool would look the other way

When the past catches up, as it always does
So two flames will dance a final duet
The ghost of the sword must be laid to rest
The flame extinguished by the mud and the wet

I recently finished reading the eight volumes of the Bamboo Samurai by Taiyō Matsumoto and for some reason, this week’s picture at MFFFC brought the story to mind.

When the two demons meet

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Seven Clear Functions Of The Mind

The choice to do and think right; refusal of temptation
Yearning to be better; repulsion of negation
Preparation for the future; let purpose be your guide
Assent to be free of deception; to control only what’s inside