HEADS UP! An editor told me that ONE cliche in a poem will get your work rejected.

Using Clichés Properly

if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it
a million times, poets need to mind their manners
and eliminate the negative and accentuate
the positive.

how many sunsets are divine, how many
oceans can be the deepest blue, and
how can gods always be
all powerful and very, very nice?

if there is a god, he’d be ashamed,
blushing down to his roots,
reading these ham-fisted verses clogged with
burning desires.

if the ship of state sails again
on a stormy sea in the darkest night,
might god not fire a blazing thunderbolt and
stop its motion like a glimmer
in his eye?

would he not notch his belt
and hope no son of his had
fallen far from the tree?

for a pick-me-up, he’d order
a side of bacon, the aroma silently
zooming like a rocket to some distant planet
where all the dogs would be chasing their
tails around the Milky Way.