Another Poetry Writing Lesson

I'm always interested in little exercises to inform the hidden poet within (in my case so well hidden, internal thermal imaging cameras combined with extreme endoscopy probably wouldn't find him, it)). But here is another from the series: 'how to become a poet.'  It's about the avoidance of cliche and provides ways in which one might hone oneself to become a natural at always looking for the original and the sloughing away of the stock phrase.

Lesson: How to Improve a Cliché
I will take the cliché “as busy as a bee” and show how you can express the same idea without cliché.
(presumably someone thought that bees looked about as busy as anything they'd ever seen before -plus of course Bee begins with the letter 'b' which helps make it snappy and memorable.  But its time is done).

Determine what the clichéd phrase is trying to say.
In this case, I can see that “busy as a bee” is a way to describe the state of being busy.
Think of an original way to describe what the cliché is trying to describe.
For this cliché, I started by thinking about busyness. I asked myself the question, “What things are associated with being busy?” I came up with: college, my friend Jessica, corporation bosses, old ladies making quilts and canning goods, and a computer, fiddlers fiddling. From this list, I selected a thing that is not as often used in association with busyness: violins.
(so not for this writer 'busy as a bee'  they are looking for something of their own.)
Create a phrase using the non-clichéd way of description.
I took my object associated with busyness and turned it into a phrase:

(And here it is) “I feel like a bow fiddling an Irish reel.”

This phrase communicates the idea of “busyness” much better than the worn-out, familiar cliché. The reader’s mind can picture the insane fury of the bow on the violin, and know that the poet is talking about a very frenzied sort of busyness. In fact, those readers who know what an Irish reel sounds like may even get a laugh out of this fresh way to describe “busyness.”
(so homework!) Try it! Take a cliché and use these steps to improve it. You may even end up with a line you feel is good enough to put in a poem!

As mad as a hatter. As white as snow. As hard as a rock. That kind of thing.  Like with the example I won't simply look for a new simile, but to resent the figurative comparison in different ways. Irate and red-faced he exploded himself through his front door with such venom he called easily have left a cartoon shaped hole of himself behind.  I could still hear his rage-filled shouts and animal snorts five minutes after he was gone. Actually I might have got rather carried away there - mad as in hatter means bonkers not rage. Perhaps he turned up wearing a tartan pair of shorts attached braces, long luminous socks, ballet pumps and a sombrero and little else. He seemed to be having an argument with himself. People turned their backs when ever he approached lest they caught his eye and were drawn into an unwanted conversation with someone who seemed if harmless, slightly mad. Not sure how that would sit in any poem - but I suppose the idea here is to work at cliche killing for whatever purpose.

The War Against Cliche

You should murder your darlings,
don't love them too much. You
must harden your eyes
and stiffen to kill your little ones,
who sit prettily born but formless, still.
Before the blood has dried,
before your knife of blue and blood has dried,
slash and slice and cut those sleep-filled
fillers, squat and squalidly sat, 
pregnant with old meanings,
relics now spent of energy. 
Ghosts of imaginations.