Similes and metaphors are not inherently poetic.  They’re designed to compare things, not to sound grandiose.  They can sound grandiose and poetic, but you need to keep their original purpose in mind.  Most bad metaphors are bad because they focus on poetry at the expense of accurate comparison. 

Simple is better.  Think about how “rainbow” is only two words smashed together, but it wonderfully describes the colored band of light that appears when the sun hits the rain just right.  A bow for the rain.  A rainbow.  The longer you make your similes and metaphors, the greater their chances of failure. 

Try to avoid adjectives.  “The bear was rushing at me like a train” is far better than “The bear was rushing at me like a furry train.”  I once read a book that put such adjectives in every single simile.  If a train isn’t bear-like enough, use a different object.  Don’t try to turn a train into a bear to make it work.  Besides, in that specific simile, the traits being compared were size and speed, not appearance.

The reason emo-orbs doesn’t work as a metaphor for eyes is not because of the word orbs. Orbs is a bit of a contrived and overdone replacement word for eyes, but I’ve seen it used well before. Emo is teenage slang.  I personally would never use a slang term in a simile or metaphor.  Even worse than trying to be poetic is using too crude of language.  For some reason, it just looks silly, no matter how accurate it is.

The follower of the day is infinitelovelike.