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 P

Play with fire

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

To engage in dangerously risky behavior; warns against actions likely to cause serious harm or consequences, comparing reckless conduct to handling fire carelessly.

Detailed Definition
Play with fire means to take a dangerous risk, especially by provoking forces that may become uncontrollable. In poetry, the idiom is naturally rich because fire symbolises passion, destruction, purification, inspiration, and divine or erotic power. It can describe forbidden love, political rebellion, addiction, revenge, ambition, or reckless speech. A poet may use it to show attraction to danger, where warmth and light tempt the speaker towards possible burning. It suits poems about perilous desire and moral hazard.
Example
Example in poetry:
A moral poem might warn that the young alchemist plays with fire when pride enters the laboratory; In a love poem, forbidden glances become playing with fire; The phrase means taking a dangerous risk; A poet can use it for temptation, rebellion, and peril.
Additional Notes
Play with fire means take a dangerous risk, especially knowingly. Fire carries strong poetic associations: warmth, desire, creativity, destruction, purification, and punishment. The idiom suits forbidden love, political rebellion, addiction, curiosity, and reckless speech. Students should notice that playing implies childishness or unseriousness, while fire is deadly serious. This contrast creates moral tension between excitement and consequence.
Also Known As
risk danger
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