Hi Manna ~
I just realized I had never returned to respond to this and here I am about to go to bed. So, briefly, yes... this is how I took it overall:
Or is the message a generalized kind of,"Stop worrying about this little performance and getting yourself laid; there are bigger things in the world?"
With the children caught in China's earthquake, there has been devastation beyond measure. Considering China's one-child policy, the devastation has been amplified for the surviving parents, if any. It's hitting home with a lot of people in a very intense way, and that seemed to me to be what was happening with Greg... and 'proportions' came into view; not of the penis variety, but the life-scale variety. Now, the aftershocks have destroyed a huge number of more homes. The monsoon season is coming and people are without shelter. Slower deaths are on the horizon.
The trout
That opens its mouth
Sleeps with the fishes
On the dishes.
This I read as the gullibility issue... we take the bait and end up on the plate. The marketing of V i a g r a; the necessity of being sexy and whatever the marketers deem that to be [though the V product seems to be one appreciated by the users, regardless of what the marketers say], however, the kleenex in the young girls' bras and the young boys' shoes... reflect marketing that's reaching the young.
Sprinkle my heart with lemon,
Parsley, paprika,
And battery acid.
This to me seemed to be an expression of the pain of the heart. Try to make it better by enhancing it, but the battery acid will dominate, all the same. I see where it also relates back to the fish, with all but the battery acid being one preparation. We are still the fishes.
It's better to have never been born
Than to be reborn still-born time and time again.
I don't have concrete ideas as to what he meant with this. I got stuck with an image of GWB when I read it and couldn't get past it.
Over there are the young,
Hiding out in the open.
This describes the current devastation in China.
Kleenex in her bra,
Kleenex in his shoes,
I know they're only trying to get even.
This describes what's happening with that daily 'be attractive to each other' with children here. He acknowledges that they're trying to equalize themselves with what's going on around them and with each other. Going on with life, doing their little things... with maybe a later graduation to the V when they get older.
Save your kleenex children.
There are children in China that need 'em more than you.
This poem as a whole, with that emphasis in the last line, reminds me of how I felt when John Lennon was shot. Everything went into bas relief, with my automatically contrasting, as I couldn't help noticing, the trivial stuff going on seemingly everywhere around me, when such a
devastating event had just occurred. I felt hurt and angry and it felt so much worse when I saw what seemed to be the trivialities of how some people were living their lives [I felt angry at the world, and at the people I would see who seemed to be 'wasting' their lives with 'trivialities,' when someone else, who was doing so much with his, had just lost it]. I remember in particular two guys on the bus being jerks... not to me, but just in general. I recall having that dark, shadow-self thought of "Why couldn't it have been you? Why not someone like you?" That, of course, suggests that the value of people's lives varies; yet, grief doesn't always take a predictably rational and honourable course... and those thoughts sometimes just come, even though they don't stay long.
Greg's poem seemed to me to make the point that the children in China have nothing, not even kleenex. It's true that Johnny oughta eat his broccoli, when there are children in China starving. Yet, there is huge trauma going on over there right now, at this very moment, and it's real and present, not a generalized truth about starvation, that one can use at the dinner table with children. The poem seems to me to be a way of processing pain, when there's no way to make sense of what you're seeing, reading, and hearing about, regarding the real-time horror and unfathomable loss that's going on there.
You know, of course, that I could be wrong in any/all of my interpretation, but that's how I took it to be, at least for me.
~ Lizzy
