I spent a whole year researching embarrassment.
It was a lot of fun.
I just did embarrassing things over and over again.
And I didn't start off researching it.
They just kept happening.
And then I thought, well, I should get a poem out
of this if I'm going to suffer this much.
Anyway, I came up with eight parts.
And it's sort of ongoing.
It's one of those great assignments that just never
really fails you.
It will always provide something new, something
more as you go through life.
Embarrassment-- it's a wave, isn't it?
Not a particle, a fresh, cool wave,
so why am I flushed and not washed,
why dirtier than before?
1, etymology-- on the subject of our names,
they're so embracing, thinking they're all us
and swallowing themselves into our nausea.
Yet we never quite die on the spot.
We put off being what we're called.
We take the hint.
Time is never wasted.
It is always spent.
2, teleology-- sheer fabric trailing through 4:00 AM.
I thought it was opaque and earlier.
3, mathematics-- I know you know I know.
And the mirror multiplies inside.
The world is no bigger.
But next time, do the math, because I
wanted to know none of what I now know twice.
4, the principle of the Borg--
saying 'there's no one like me' accomplishes the exact opposite
of what you mean.
It is true only insofar as it is true for everyone equally.
So it means you are not special in any way, which
should be enough for you.
5, documentary-- this clothing, a maladaptive wrapping,
cuts me up.
I am a vignette, floated knowingly,
since I pulled myself through myself like a unitard.
Too many eye holes have been cut and pieced together
to make flesh less various with others.
6, medicine-- the cure for embarrassment is substitution.
Strap, don't pluck.
Baldness makes headlines.
Use grass.
Use less.
Shorts under your skirt for recess.
Redo the surfaces of your wrong turns
to make taking them smoother in the future.
7, cosmology-- things are less embarrassing
at the cellular level, remember?
We were a whole part of the universe
before Mother busted the party, before we were ourselves.
Now, like dirty soap, we attract what we repel.
8, apology-- even the clumsiest fate is perfectly shaped,
so the view took overlooking.
But the sweetest thing I've ever known
is obscene, with a beautiful sugar rotted down to its truth.
Loving you, a serious accidental shame, and day flatulates
into night, trips and falls in front of millions into morning.
In thrall to this pocus.
The end of fear starts with such an annihilating
blush, with such a stutter.