You Sir Are Ze Idiom

A surreal, linguistic fever dream — this poem imagines a cosmic war between the emotional excess of adjectives and the alien logic of conjugation. Idioms become foot soldiers, metaphors turn militant.

They brought a knife to a word fight,

and the adjectives, drunk on their own drama,

stormed the syntax citadel

with metaphors duct-taped to their chests.

The Idiom Engine Dies Screaming

The star, once a beacon of clarity,

now hemorrhages light �"

a dying supernova of misplaced modifiers

and dangling participles.

War broke out in the margins:

“Break a leg!” shouted the idioms,

while the alien conjugations from Planet Myth-Alpha

declined every offer of peace.

The past perfect tense

dug trenches in the subjunctive mood,

while similes fled the scene

like rats from a burning cliché.

Even the Oxford comma defected.

In the final stanza,

the star collapsed into a black hole

of forgotten etymologies,

where every sentence ends

not with a period,

but a scream.

And somewhere,

a semicolon weeps

for what might have been.

The Idiom Engine Dies Screaming

Author's Note

This one’s a bit of a genre-bender — part satire, part cosmic metaphor, part linguistic meltdown. Feel free to ignore grammar (ironically), and let me know how the metaphors land: does the image of a star dying because of a war between adjectives and conjugations work for you? Did the idioms feel fresh or forced? I’m curious about the pacing and whether the ending delivers the emotional punch or just the absurdity. Also: how did the semicolon make you feel?