The Book Of Forgetfulness Poem by Allan Thorne

This is a long piece. I have been reading CD Wright and Calvino lately so blame them.

This is a long piece. I don't know how many people have the attention span for long poems anymore. I have been reading CD Wright and Calvino lately so blame them.
Thanks
Allan



You wander down narrow halls
In deep silence
The smell of rotting paper
Heavy in the air.
The smell of all libraries down to the present age.
This is how the library of Alexandria smelled
On those dark soft Egyptian nights.

Here in these deserted stacks,
Here in this deserted tomb of forgotten knowledge
Glowing amongst the crumbling volumes
Bound in gray and brown
Beckons one slim volume
sheathed in red leather embossed with gold.
Take it down.
Marvel at its weight
Open the cover with reverence and growing excitement
And behold
The Book Of Forgetfulness

Don’t bother trying to remember why you came
Or what you hoped to find.
Your memories are false.
Your memories are no more real than your dreams.
You are making them up as you go along.
Trust in this.: It didn’t happen that way
No matter what you think.
Your memories are no more real than dreams
And what fool would base a life on dreams?
So let it go.
Let it all go.

The Gypsy turns over the first card
It is the card zero, called
The Fool

The fool strides joyfully down the road
Oblivious to the cliff in his path
And the lion that lurks behind the bush
And this is how you must go.
Walk out of this building
Walk out of this darkness
Into the dazzling light
with a light an carefree heart
With an mind open and empty
Free of memories and ready to be filled with NOW!

“Forget it! ” she said.
“Forget you! ” he said
And walked away
Down the down the hall
Smelling of mold and rotting carpet
And down the stairs
And out onto the street
Into the drooling fragrant night.

Forget to remember.
Remember to forget.
There you go. That’s how it’s done.
The past is slow poison
killing you one moment at a time
for an eternity of moments
strung together like a string of pearls
Or a chain of galaxies spanning the universe
Round and round.

In the beginning
When you open your eyes
On the first moment of your life
There was only NOW,
The first moment,
Card zero, The Fool.
And all the rest is a sorry
descent to death.
From NOW to NOTHING
With a chain of memories to tie them together.
Boxes of old letters
Boxes of photos,
Postcards, old bank statements, cancelled checks
And one day
Somebody
Who couldn’t give a damn
Will be loading it all into a dumpster
Or feeding it all into a fire
Like so many old leaves.

Don’t worry
It’s all going
It’s all going to go.
To much fatty food
Cooked in to many aluminum pans
And the brain crystals grow
And the memories go.
Good bye! goodbye!
I forget your name
But I love you once
and soon I won’t
Remember even that.
And when it’s all gone
and only NOW is left
It will be easy to go
It is only the memories that make you cry
it is only the memories that make you want to stay.

Don’t forget eggs.
And don’t forget to feed the dog.

“Ah to hell with all that I’ll forget what I damn well please.”

It is the remembering that separates you from the eternal NOW.
It is the remembering that makes you believe in time.
The remembering that makes you believe the past
And hope for the future,
Which will be better, maybe.
The remembering that makes you drink
the remembering that makes your cry.
Forget it dry your eyes.
Let the dog get his own dinner.
If he can remember how!

And when you are done
When you have reached the end,
The last page of
The Book of Forgetfulness,
The book of forgotten things.
Forgotten places, forgotten people,
Days that passed into night without remark
Faces that passed in the crowd without recognition.
Things that went unnoticed
Places that looked like other places
So that they got all confused
All smeared together into something
That is no place at all.
When you are done with all that
Please return the book
To the shelf where you found it.
So that others may come and find it and forget
And wander away as you must now,
Empty, card zero, the Fool.

Wander down these dark, dense, aisles
Like tunnels in a coal mine
Bored through layer upon layer
Of forgotten things
Buried deeper and deeper by yet more things
Until all the light is squeezed out.
Whole worlds of experience to be
Mined out in the fullness of time and burned
Like the library of Alexandria
Like your grandma’s photos one autumn afternoon.
All those forgotten cares,
All those forgotten passions,
Nod to the librarian as you pass
and walk out of that tomb
Into the dazzling light of NOW.

Years latter someone may ask you
“Did you ever come across a book called
The Book of Forgetting or the Book of Lost Memories
Or something like that? ”
You’ll say
“Seems like I did once
But I have forgotten what it was about”