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| Unsplash photo by Joshua Earle |
Life On Top
Make a mess
Make a life
Life is sweet
Life is bitter
Bitter end
Bitter pill to swallow
Swallow it whole
Swallow your pride
Pride before a fall
Pride that bursts
Bursts of anger
Bursts of joy
Joy in a bundle
Joy mixed with tears
Tears your heart out
Tears it to pieces
Pieces of pie
Pieces of writing
Writing on the wall
Writing it off
Off the cuff
Off balance
Balance and checks
Balance the books
Books we rewrite
Books a flight
Flight of wine
Flight of fancy
Fancy that
Fancy up
Up my spine
Up in the air
Air your grievance
Air it out good
Good grief
Good as gold
Gold standard
Gold can't stay
Stay put
Stay ahead
Ahead of time
Ahead of the game
Game changer
Game over
Over easy
Over the top
Top heavy
Top flight
Heavy
Flight
©Mary Lee Hahn, 2018
This poem is written in the Blitz Poem poetic form.
I made extensive use of The Free Dictionary, which has a tab for idioms. I also needed an exhaustive list of prepositions to craft my title. Because the title comes from the 3rd and 47th lines of the poem, I revised the last ten lines four times because I couldn't find a preposition I liked that linked life with blood, back, or easy. And I sure wasn't going to go all the way back and change line 3!
Holy buckets, Mary Lee. You made it looks so ... easy! I wanna try one of these. I wonder if a (simpler) version would be a fun thing to try with students? Have you done that?
ReplyDeleteOne reason I thought that was because the barrage of idioms combined with their juxtaposition helped me see the common word in the idioms in new ways. One great example of that was that superb pairing: stay put / stay ahead, but there were others, including the homophone tear/tear.
Lots of fun and some wisdom, too. I took some from these lines:
Air the grievance
Air it out good
Good grief
:)