By popular demand (popsycal) here is exercise 5.
Poems do not need to contain metaphors in order to be good. However, metaphors are often used in poetry and can make a good poem much better.
A metaphor is description which is imaginatively but not literally representative of that which it describes. It may be personification of an inanimate object, for example.
The following is an example:
Digging for Gold
Monday Morning
the suits conglomerate.
Home counties
merge osmotically
into square mile.
All carry tools.
Laptops wedged in
standing room only.
Phones ringing
in sardine cans.
Springs for queue-jumping.
Ropes for climbing.
Knives for back-stabbing.
Drugs for stress.
Picks and shovels
intended for gold-digging
form holes
into which they fall.
As we all know, city white-collar workers do not carry picks and shovels to work. These are used as metaphors - they are gold-digging after all.
Try writing a poem which contains a metaphor.