Friday, August 3, 2018

Life on the Top


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!



1 comment:

  1. 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?

    One 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

    :)

    ReplyDelete