Overforgetting

I want to overforget.

Not just not recall,
but live as though
the thing
never happened.

To get in practice I’d
overforget
bunches of
movies, a lot of songs.
A lot of books.  Certain lovers.
Meals taken with those lovers.
Details, mostly.  Details
no longer attached to lovers
but which rise and disturb
and damn me to recall —
hell yes, overforget all that.

You say,
there was a movie about this.
I say no,
there wasn’t.

I would then overforget
a lot of animals I killed
individually and by species
whether by bullets, neglect, over-consumption
of resources — no matter the method of their murders,
I’d overforget them.  Suddenly
nobody has fur coats, photos disappear
from calendars. I’ve overforgotten them,
you can’t have them either,

for this is not the complete mind-erasure
of legend — I would choose what to lose
and once I had chosen
all trace would disappear from the world
for all.  Overforgetting would leave nothing
to stir even a ghost.

You say,
this would be so cruel to the rest of us.
You say,
we’d wander around with our own memories
and wonder if we were crazy to think these things
had ever existed.
You say,
how could you think to rob us like this?

I say,
who are you?

You ask me why I yearn for this?
Really?  Haven’t you ever walked
a street in an unfamiliar place
and been rocked by a scent or sound
and dived into your pocket
for the money to buy the cab fare, the flask,
the pipe or the pills
to carry you away from the suspicion
that something you’d forgotten at last
after years of work
was returning
and though you couldn’t quite place it
you knew it was awful and that you’d want
to dig your eyes from their sockets
and rip ears and nose from your head
to keep it away from you?

You say,
but you would lose who you are now
and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,
you’re the sum of…etc., etc.

I say,
have we met?
Do you know who you’re talking to?

You say
ow, no, not this,
not this scent of bitter-burnt orange
and sick-sweet wires, raw ozone, dirt of bones,
auras on the wind here,
time to flee;

I say, oh, good, it’s working,
overforgetting,
I don’t recognize that —
isn’t it sweet,
and tangy, and so thick on the tongue — say,
where are you stumbling off to so fast?
Don’t you want to know what really happened here?

Tags: poems, poetry, 9/11-processing