Red lace

[Magpie]

A question, when you said "how did I miss the lacy thong on the floor, the dirty handprints adorning the door" felt out of place, did you mean the length of the rhyme didn't fit with the rhythm, or that it's just too rhyme-y? I don't really understand.. 

It was mostly because that there didn't seem to be any fixed rhyme scheme throughout the poem and the 'almost rhymes' in the beginning of the poem could be seen as not intentional and they therefore felt more natural whereas the 'floor/door' leaps out and doesn't feel right within the poem as a whole.

Thanks! Yep, I kind of thought "this is the price I pay" might be cliche, now I'm sure. 

Trying to avoid cliche would seem like such an easy thing to do but even the best of poets can fall into the cliche trap without even realising it. I think this happens a lot of the time because whilst writing a poem you get so involved and so up close to it that it is sometimes hard to see things unless you get a bit distance. Ideally it would be best to write a poem and then forget about it for a week or so and then go back to it by which time you have the distance to be able to look at it differently.
Another thing I mentioned to someone else recently was using a search engine like google which predicts what you are going to type. If it guesses it then chances are it is a cliche, it isn't foolproof but it can help in some way perhaps. Just now I had "the price I " typed in and it suggested "the price I pay", so??? I would also say that "fine wine" was a cliche as well as "thank god" but I didn't want to seem to harsh... ooopsss.

It gets easier, honest,

Mark