A jolt of color can move your memory in unexpected ways. Get out some water colors and make six distinct blobs. Then, try to name those blobs with a sharpie. Be as wild / associative as possible as you name the blobs ("Mom's Hair," Bouganvillea," etc). A color thesaurus may help.

Let your mind move through the colors, and choose one of two poetry prompts:

1) Write a poem that moves somehow from the darkest color to the brightest color (an image of mom's hair --> UT orange)

2) Challenge yourself to write a poem with one of the color names as or in your title ("Bubblegum Pink," "Onyx," "Dream in Cobalt," etc).

Music has a way of transporting us. Revisit a playlist you made a long time ago (as far back as your device or Spotify or mixed CD catalogue will take you). Choose a song from the list that makes your heart skip a beat, and free-write while you listen to it. Remember there are no rules in free-writing: full-on sentimentality is to be expected, here; nothing's too corny and whatever comes to mind is allowed. Repeat the activity 3 times, so that you've free-written for about 10 minutes. Then go back with a highlighter, picking out language or images that you think are worth exploring. Use the found image/metaphor/memory to begin a new poem.

As an experiment, consider some of the following conundrums presented by the study of particle physics (overly simplified for purposes of our poetic play):

• electrons have never been directly observed (we can only predict where they're likely to be)

• at the smallest level of reality, nature is probabilistic 

• there is no clear definition of "observation"

  • "It is necessary to distinguish clearly between the measured value of quantity and the vaule resulting from the measurement process" (some particle physics textbook)

It can be lonely to think our brains can only give us a sense of reality (literally, by sensing), that such a sense is necessarily objective and confused, and that our individual experiences are just that-- individual. But it's also freeing, isn't it? It doesn't matter how bad your memory is, because it's all you've got. Go back to a memory that you know is important to you, but that is slippery. Write a poem by making your way toward the following collapses:

• Somewhere in lines 1-5: "interference"

• Somewhere in lines 5-10: "sum of patterns"

• Somewhere in lines 10-15: "uncertainty" or "uncertainty principle"

You can revise these words/phrases out of the poems later if they distract from the register. or tone you discover. But leave them in there for the first few drafts. 

Take yourself to an art museum and find a piece of work that consternates you. Spend at least one hour with it, taking no notes. Then, go find a quiet place to write. Draft a poem that doesn't mention the piece of art, but that takes inspiration from the state of mind it put you in. See what comes of it. If the poem draft ends up coming to life, you should use an epigraph, after X.