Shame/Ashamed

[joel]

Ashamed is nothing like perennial
accomplishments, is nothing like a yard
of season-come and season-go delights,
despite the myth that Shame revisits life.
At best is Shame an annual disease--
a summer weed that quickly buds and dies,
since Shame is an assassin; and Ashamed
is certain death and cannot be reframed
like flowers bloomed again--and I despise
those freak show exposés of horrid strife,
those circus tricks of Shame, that seem to ease
its Murder into Character. The heights
of Shame are gallows drops; and fallen hard
against it, death is once, not serial.