A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter B

Burn one's fingers

Idiomatic Phrase
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Burn one's fingers: to suffer consequences from meddling in risky or contentious affairs; the tactile pain image warns against interference and appears in cautionary or satirical verse.

Detailed Definition
Burn one's fingers means to suffer harm, embarrassment, loss, or painful consequences after meddling in something risky. In poetry, the idiom is useful for cautionary poems about desire, greed, ambition, forbidden knowledge, or unwise involvement. The fire image makes experience bodily: the lesson is not merely understood but felt as pain. A poet may use it to show how wisdom is gained through damage, especially when curiosity or confidence leads too close to danger. It suits themes of warning, regret, and hard-earned knowledge.
Example
Example in poetry:
A cautionary poem might say the gambler burnt his fingers on easy gold; In a love poem, the speaker burns his fingers by touching a dangerous affection; The phrase suits poems about costly experience and painful lessons; A satirical poet could use it for politicians harmed by their own schemes.
Additional Notes
To burn one’s fingers means suffer consequences from meddling in a risky matter. The idiom works well in poetry because touch, heat, curiosity, and pain are all immediate sensory elements. It can apply to forbidden love, politics, speculation, gossip, magic, or ambition. Students should notice its cautionary structure: the hand reaches, the fire answers, and experience becomes a lesson.
Also Known As
get burned
Skip to main content