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.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this 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 F

flay

Archaic Terms
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

To strip the skin or hide from a body; to peel off the outer layer; also metaphorically means to criticize harshly or punish severely.

Detailed Definition
“Flay” conveys extreme violence, literal or metaphorical. In mythological or hellish poetry, it depicts torture or exposure (“flayed truth”). The verb’s sharpness suits scenes of revelation or retribution. Poets use it to express raw vulnerability or divine wrath, where surface is stripped to reveal essence—often in allegories of justice, art, or suffering.
Example
Example in poetry:
"They flayed him with words, not knives," in a psychological lyric; In biblical poetry: "My soul is flayed by sorrow"; "Flay not the sinner, but redeem him"; Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus contains literal flaying, but poets use it metaphorically; "The critic’s pen flayed the work to bone"; Flay away illusion, reveal truth.
Additional Notes
“Flay” implies excruciating punishment or exposure; in allegorical or satirical verse, to “flay” can mean to strip away pretense, revealing raw truth—linking physical and rhetorical violence in critiques of hypocrisy.
Also Known As
skin strip whip
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