Tag: W3

The REDACTED Files – 5th February 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 22 Comments

Written after seeing some disturbing images of REDACTED with REDACTED. I don’t know if they were part of the REDACTED files or if they were real but sadly, it seems likely.
Shared with W3 #197 – erasure poem – redacted

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Steady Your Impulses

Soaring highs and crushing lows
Impulses always keep on coming
Ask yourself: Who is in control here?
Get your steady engine humming

An Absurd Tail – 26th December 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 18 Comments

I woke up this morning with a tail
This new appendage has become proof
My centre of gravity shifted
But what can I do with this new truth?

Is this a dream or a cosmic glitch?
My animal instinct manifest?
Checking behind at each errant twitch
It’s such a struggle when getting dressed

Reverting to something once forbidden
The wagging always gives me away
Unable to keep my feelings hidden
A real animal? Well! Who’s to say?

Shared with W3 #191 – improbable

Obsolete Wonder – 19th December 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 24 Comments

Shared with W3 #190 – quoting Wordsworth*

The world clicks by in screens of graphic gain,
each hour refined for either profit, loss, or trend.
Praising the sharpest tools ever made to explain,
yet wondering why these days refuse to bend.

I walk beneath the wires and silent trees
and feel a hunger numbers cannot feed.
Our minds seem full of malaise and disease,
which is surely something none of us need.

I’d trade this clever age, so sure it’s new,
to be a Pagan suckled in a creed outworn*,
to hear a god breathe as the wind blows through,
and see the ocean settle for a new dawn.

These times, obsolete is the wonder, not belief;
The myth awakes where certainty may sleep.

Humbled – 12th December 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 18 Comments

Made of smokestacks and trusses,
interlocking and rectilinear;
Naves are wandering the new brick streets,
humbled by shelter, by pressure.

Solidarity in civic identity,
iron tasted on the tongue;
Dwarfed by an engineered order,
humbled by progress, by claustrophobia.

Such industry held up on hills,
dormitories are bent and sooty brown;
Anonymous postures pause conversations,
humbled by pride, by fatigue.

Shared with W3 #189 – picture prompt

A Minor Role – 23rd November 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 33 Comments

There’s a dead mosquito on my dashboard,
on her back, legs pointing up in the air;
Perhaps overfed, on my blood engorged;
I’m not sure how long she’s been lying there.

I’ve never been one for cleaning my cars;
something that my wife cannot comprehend.
A minor role to play in my memoirs;
I don’t know her history, only her end.

Would it be so weird to give her a name,
something infused with deeper meaning?
Well, no matter, there’s nothing to explain;
she’ll be gone once my wife does the cleaning.

Shared with W3 #186 – an unimportant thing. This is an ongoing true story.

Treefalls – 31st October 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 20 Comments

Shared with W3 #183 – mystery.

Could we be quantum
under the bunkum?
Is the clock really ticking?
No one saw the moon.
Uri bent no spoon;
the mind is there for tricking.

The book that’s unread,
ideas never spread;
stuck in Zeno’s Paradox.
Paths we never walked,
thoughts flashed by untalked;
Schrodinger’s cat in a box.

It’s one hand clapping;
a deaf dog yapping
Says, ‘What colour is the sky?’
Unreal perception,
sold self-deception;
it’s the who, what, when, and why.

Big Toe Blues – 24th October 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 28 Comments

If you could talk, what would you say?

You’re the one that keeps me stable,

not wobbling in a doubtful sway.

If you could talk, what would you say?

When I stub you and swear away

at that stupid fucking table.

If you could talk, what would you say?

You’re supposed to keep me stable!

Shared with W3 #182 – a triolet about something ordinary.

Some Surrender – 19th October 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 16 Comments

The both of me are struggling inside

One wants to just enjoy the ride

A hedonist with parties to attend

A firestorm with fuel to spend

Better to burn out than fade away?

So, tonight is the time to play

…Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…

The both of me, struggling to get out

The anxious side, processing doubt

Every word needs to be remembered
So that some time must be surrendered

If all this savouring gets rephrased

Will it be somehow falsely praised?

Did it really happen as we say?

The feeling is that it must be done today…

…Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…

The both of me are struggling to win
A desperate balance being fought within
This happiness must be documented

Not pass by forgotten and lamented
So tonight I’ll simply sigh and say
That if it cannot be done today

…Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…

Shared with W3 #181 – a bop poem. This poem was inspired by this week’s dVerse prompt, using a line from a Günter Grass poem as a refrain. I saw this line, “…Tomorrow, I’ll write down everything…” used in the poem ‘Tomorrow’ and along with the word ‘bop’, this reminded me (again!) of the dilemma Jack Kerouac would face when having fun with his friends but wanting to rush home to write it down before it got forgotten to the mists of time. I see that I have written this poem before, too! Perhaps this is part two?
In the first stanza, I reference Firestorm, a DC comic character that at one time was two different people inside one body, often struggling with decisions. This came to mind as I had been reading it last night.