The Chop Shop

There is some kind of connotative leap going on here. My brain isn't making the connections that the poem is aiming for. I keep coming back to the idea that this is like slanting off a slant rhyme.

The tone works; again it brings up ideas about childhood vs. adulthood, or lost innocence, but I'm still left with this distant voice issue. It's like I'm only allowed to read it as description and I am finding it difficult to explain why that makes me feel like I'm being kept out of the poem. The poet can do this, but it makes for a somewhat disingenuous poem.

In military funerals there is a twenty one gun salute. I am not sure why there is a variance here. Is it for effect? It must be purposeful, i want to understand. My mind wants to make connections and understand every line of a poem. As is i have problems in places in this poem. Maybe not understanding meaning, but making connections.

With the first line "The plastic cup of fruit is open" are you refering to the fruit cups at Java City?

This is what you call mixing an abstract idea with a solid one... I am 'fruit cup', hear me roar... I wanted to get the sense of a failed relationship, using the sense of taste, so whatever came to memory that was sweet was what I used...fruit cups at Java City..31 flavors of Baskin Robbins..and so on. This poem simply associates sweetness with the "last visit" or time spent with an ex-lover. The sour worm at the end represents a bit too much reality hitting our taste buds, and that turns things around; hence we drown in bitterness.

And now, I feel I have drowned my meaning. But oh, well: if it is fixable let me know, without giving in to that terrible word known as SPECIFICS.

Using different sources of sweetness as a sort of metaphor for love is do-able, but I needed something more tangible in order to make that connection.

I can understand if you're afraid of overtly spelling out your intentions, but I think its ok to throw the readers a (small) bone.

So since I liked the shorter lines of the other version, is it possible to shorten the lines of this one while simultaneously packing in more tangible information?