Tag: W3

Under The Cover – 5th April 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 24 Comments

Beyond the paragraphs and stanzas
Where stories start being told
Round campfires, on verandahs
Ideas – like origami – unfold

Within each sentence, there emerges
Lines flowing skywards from the soul
Where sunshine and saccharine diverges
To tally what the parts withhold

Under the phrase, where the weight lightens
Adjectives get detached from their nouns
Order is loosened; or disorder tightens
Dissected from their objects’ surrounds

Inside each word that’s to be announced
Where every breath becomes considered
Accents distort how it’s all pronounced
Not always intended as delivered

Beneath every syllable assessed
Meaning flickers in recognition
Beyond one thing that’s being expressed
The mastery of imprecision

Below the phoneme, perhaps that’s where to start
Where the true heart of the story lies
Put back together after being pulled apart
Ambivalence is where the author dies

Shared with W3 #205 – Beneath The Surface

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Trust, But Verify

Let me see who you are, where you are from
Let me put you to the test
Despite our experience, we may still be wrong
Verification is for the best

Hushes – 28th February 2026

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ 20 Comments

Shared with W3 #200 – alphabet poetry

ash beneath cradle;

drifting
echoes,
fade;

glowing hushes
in jewelled knots

linger,

murmur;

night observations
pale quietly;

ribbons, silvery tin;
under veils,

wispy x-rays
yearning zero.

Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

When You Lose Control

Reason may have abandoned you
But it was you who had abandoned it
After messing up, what did you do?
Stop! Compose! And just let it sit

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.