Cliff Notes

Write what you can’t remember.
Write down what you used to know,
Everything that you forgot.

Call it imagination,
If you like. Call it darkness.
Watch it shrink-wrap what you write

Until a statistician
Could infer your loss of mind
From dwindling diversity

In your vocabulary.
Available memories
Will try to push to the front,

But you can get around them
And quit writing about them,
If you randomize enough.

Pick a date you were alive.
Use some form of throwing darts.
Repeat until you hit days

You can’t recollect at all,
Not even the surrounding
Events of note—ideally,

Not even a general
Sense of your life at the time.
The blanker, the better. Now,

Write. What is that like? Early
Attempts will be abstractions
Complaining about the blank,

But we’re not here to complain,
Are we? No. Early childhood
Doesn’t count. Only use it

If your memory’s too good,
And then be careful to skip
Across the glowing islands

Within mists of juvenile
Amnesia—go for those mists
Themselves. See what a fine spray

The more entropic waters
Of the fog make from the falls?
You can’t even see the edge!

Write about a basic term
You can’t picture anymore.
Tiptoe to the precipice

Where you can get vertigo
Asking yourself, what is this?
A fugue state? Temporary

Epileptic amnesia?
Estrangement? No? Estrangement?
No, I already thought that!

Damn it, what’s the word for this?
What are those things on the ground?
Why is there wind on my face?