The Fabled Cliché

Never say a good or a bad egg.
However, if there is an egg involved
do not ever assume it is an indifferent one.

It should never be said to be a bed of roses ever again.
It should be a bad, a bid, a bod, a bud, and sometimes a byd of roses,
or alternatively a bed of burgundies or mattress of merlots.

When you are thinking of saying she has a bee in her bonnet,
substitute wasps, hornets, or other stinging creatures,
letting us know there is a mosquito in her chapeau.

Sometimes it is good to resort to mathematics to avoid a cliché,
as in two birds in the hand are worth four birds in the bush, or a bird in the hand is worth
a number of birds, x, that is greater than one and less than three, in a topiary.

Why settle for simply saying something’s a blast from the past,
when you can go with a blow from long ago
or a backward explosion from the future?

You will score big points with readers gone blasé over a bolt out of or from the blue,
if you write it was like a lightning strike out of the sad,
or a zigzag electrical discharge from between violet and green on the color spectrum.

A million pieces?  Really?  That’s a heck of lot of pieces.
How would you count them, no matter be they large or small,
and what are the chances of so exact, so round a figure?

Avoid referring to the strength of a chain being determined by its weakest link.
Try saying a chain is only as strong as the greater the proportion of its carbon component,
or a chain is only as strong as the number of crunches it can do in a minute.

Finally, at all costs avoid using the hackneyed phrase
at all costs, choosing rather a refreshing take such as, at all
direct, indirect, fixed, variable, operating, opportunity, sunk, and/or controllable costs.

And so we say there was an egg, neither good nor bad,
perched high atop a futon of pinot noirs.
At this moment it had an asp in its thinking cap.
When would the day of hatching come so it could be held in someone’s hand,
valued far above a number of other birds between one and three
sitting out of reach on a shrub or in a tree.
As if gobsmacked by a granite pillow from the dark ages,
the hardly (softly/poachedly/friedly/scrambledly/deviledly) indifferent egg realized
it was reliving a past life event when it also had yearned for hatching
in order to achieve its dream of treasured manual belonging.
This zigzag electrical discharge from the primary color opposite orange on the wheel,
toppled the now very much involved egg from its boozy perch.
Reaching desperately to avoid falling, just as it had in that former life,
the bitter zero-minute egg instantly comprehended the futility of its situation,
understood unequivocally it had no little feet with which to grab onto any blessed thing,
so unable to save itself, suffered a death fall and shattered into
nine-hundred-ninety-nine-thousand-nine-hundred-ninety-nine pieces.
Some passing soldiers and their horses stopped to see
if they could put the hapless egg back together.
The King, pleasantly surprised by all the horses’ willingness to give it a go,
but shaking his head over the intelligence of all his men believing this could be done,
cringed at the certain outcome of any battle
these recruits might have to fight at that moment,
knowing well that an army is only as strong as its densest man, or in this case, men.
Really, the entire chain was at best feeble from one rickety end to the other.
To wit, the egg was never successfully reassembled, and all the King’s horses were promoted.

Avoid, you see now, clichés at all out-of-pocket outlays.