Work Your Fingers To The Bone Poems | Examples


List of Member Poems

Premium Member sedulous

pull out all the stops
keep your shoulder to the wheel
go the extra mile

bust your chops sweat blood
work your fingers to the bone
bend over backwards

go to great lengths put 
your heart and soul into it
and work like a dog

go at it hammer 
and tongs roll up your sleeves do 
the heavy lifting

put your nose to the 
grindstone put in the hours 
break your back

Premium Member Free Advice Is Just That

These days it's clearly the fashion
To tell college grads: "Follow your passion."
Yet consider this quick note of caution:
  Make sure with your passion you'll cash in.

                 For Example:
What if your passion is playing trombone?
You spend years and years trying to hone
The skill to emit the purest of tones;
  But will you reap what you've sown?
  Or simply work your fingers to the bone,
  So you can stand in line for a loan?

                 Remember:
In life it pays to be practical,
Neither over didactical or under tactical;
  For it not, the consequences
  Tend to be quite 'dramatical,'
  Or possibly morbidly theatrical.  

                Bottom Line:
So when deciding on what occupation to make your splash in,
Do not necessarily follow your passion,
Especially if it's something quite asinine.
  Sign up instead for MY 'profession:'
  Do as I say, not what you're best in!

Sonnet For the Noughties!

Come live with me, and be my mistress!
No old-fashioned “man and wife”!
We’ll share the things you have in common …
Who wants to live the single life?

Come live with me, and do my washing.
Cook my dinner, iron my shirts:
And when I’ve squandered all your money,
I’ll show you how love really hurts …

Come live with me, and have my children.
Change their diapers, clean the loo:
And when you fall in bed, exhausted,
I’ll find you something else to do …

Come live with me, and pay the mortgage.
Work your fingers to the bone.
I’ll splash out on a brand new motor!
Ten to one, we’ll lose our home …

Come live with me, and dwell in Limbo.
Lose your looks, and break your health:
And when you’ve lost your youth and beauty,
I’ll go shack up with someone else!



With apologies to W. Shakespeare


Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.

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