Tale of a Blank New World

In one version, everyone
Simply began to forget,
Gradually, not all at once,

And not the important stuff
First, like skill sets and how to
Run the machines, make things work.

No, first, in this great mercy,
People all around the world
Began to lose the passion

They had for any people’s
Particular history,
Good or bad, awesome or sad.

Then they forgot their regrets.
Then they forgot to forgive,
Since they really did forget.

It went on a while like this.
Tensions eased. People began
To actually coexist.

Alas, things reached that juncture
Rarely encountered, where rules
For trade-offs and momentum

So general to the world
Intersect the littler rules
Observed by storytellers,

Complications, inflection
Points, some kind of ironic
Reversal or comeuppance.

Just when the world grew peaceful,
Animosities all dropped
For lack of brooding on things

That now had no existence,
People started forgetting
More facts than they could afford

To lose. It was a new kind
Of suffering, then, failure
To function, broken systems.

Some of us remember it,
Now, who somehow still survived
Forgetting it all back then.

Still, if we learned anything
From the horrors that followed,
It was to never tell them,

Never pass them on, let them
Die with us before we make
A new world angry again.