Dismal Similes

In an old TLS I read that Borges and his Boswell figure Adolfo Bioy Casares used to enliven their Argentinian ennui by inventing deliberately banal and pompous lines of what you might call pulp poetry: “The trees standing in line like memories”, was one of Borges'. On the way out of Bioy’s flat one night, Bioy declaimed “The light remained trapped in the lift, like a bird in a cage” and Borges snapped back with “we slipped into the darkness of the night like messages dropped into a letter-box”.