Greg's grebe (v.g)

[RiverNotch]

Kinda struggled with this. It's a solid poem, one that, because of my experiences, I read more as the trepidations of the depressed than the frustrations of the impotent, but either way it works. And that's why I struggled: mostly, it's kinda unpolished (see below), but there are some parts that are grossly unpolished, to the point that I had to rewrite this in my head a bunch of times just to see if they were deliberate. My guess was, and is, they weren't. T[b]o wit, "Sexual conquests / were his subject", "mile-long displays" (not that, on that second note, "miles-long" isn't right, just that it doesn't sound as smooth), "and today," -- the less grating offenders are in the following line-by-line.[/b]

Sexual conquests
were his subject
throughout high dosage – This line feels kinda cheap. Not that the opening wasn't a blunt instrument, but its bluntness I think is part of the draw; I feel like the idea in this line, which from my understanding is a play on getting high and getting elevated, should be more subtly incorporated into the next stanza, to sharpen the contrast between Greg's altitudes. 
 
mile-long displays of paper dolls,
arms and legs splayed invitingly, "invitingly" is a very weak ending. Although splayed legs don't already imply it on their own, I think that blunt first line is more than enough.
bodies well detailed. Where the last line is clear in teasing a certain almond-shaped set of organs, this one lacks too much in, ironically enough, detail. Cutting out "well detailed" is an avenue, it's certainly a barb on Greg's all-reducing hunger, but that's probably too much. Still --

As medium ground approached, This is much better positioned than the third line, although the third line being as it is really cheapens the effect.
the lines began to dwindle
and to dress
in bird-print robes, This also feels cheap, as the title and the following stanzas are already tells; better perhaps to substitute with something less overt, something that, kinda ironically, is more explicit about the metaphorical function of why the lines metamorphose as such.

and today,
at just 5 milligrams,
Greg presents a grebe – "Greg" might not be necessary here; the right pronoun, coupled with the title, should be clear enough.

a little grebe, I'm still sorta bothered by this line. Sure, repetition for emphasis, but this is supposed to be much quieter than those "mile-long displays", so the emphasis is kinda unwarranted. The break between this and the previous stanza, though, is appropriate, like a final closeup to the movie-ending MacGuffin, so some other substitute, perhaps a sneaky new detail, is needed.
sailing across a lake, 
paddling smoothly I'm definitely bothered by these two lines. Although, in conjunction with the last line, they convey the image quite well, the repetition of 'moving across the water' is again unnecessary, and "smoothly" is yet another weak ending. Better to compress these three last lines into two
through the clouds.

But really, the reason why I gave this piece a closer look is because I like grebes. Lovely work.