Paula Abdul saved my life

do you think that perhaps we know how to die?
that the soul knows how to end the body without raising use of hand or tool - only the the decision be not to go on?
these stories we hear of lifelong couples separated by the death of one only to be followed shortly by the other - is it coicidence that they reach the end at about the same time - that they are of similar age and the body shuts down just because it is time to shut down or is that it was love that powered these people and when their love is gone, they simply wish no longer to exist and choose, choose to die?
once about ten years ago, i had a bad experience on mushrooms. i left the terrifying party and arrived home - to a singlewide trailer i was occupying for the second half of a month a freind of mine had left behind for the ummer - rent paid - i was a sanctioned squatter.
i laid in my bed listening to the beating of my heart. i am part drummer, and i was on mushrooms, so I started grooving around my heartbeat - building rhythms, polyrhythms and solid beats - all with the steady heartbeat as their core. in a 'drum circle', i am apt to not initiate the groove, but allow it to grow, find it, move around it, into it and then try to change the fundamental beat at the core...the time signature even. what usually happens is I break the jam down...the grooving stops because the core had changed...this is why im only part drummer - this is not nice, communal drumming, it is selfish showboating and it generally makes things not fun.
well.
this night, i stayed true to my nature and began to focus on my heartbeat...trying to change the groove..then realized that I was trying to change my own heartbeat...and in a flash of gut-tightening fear, i felt that I had the power - somehow - to stop my own heartbeat. I had to get away from it but could not..it pumped in my ears and in my chest and moved the bed i was on...my own heartbeat became a frightening thing becaus i wanted it to stop and felt that something in me would stop it if I had to continue to listen to it.
quickly, i located the little clock radio i had (one of the few belongings i had at the time) and turned it to whatever station it was tuned to, which was the local, bad, low-grade pop station. A Paula Abdul song i think was playing. I brought the radio into the bed with me and cradled it to my chest as i curled into a fetal position...listening..to anything other than my relentless heartbeat.
eventually i slept.
i was sure that i could have stopped my own heart and part of me still believes i could have.
is this the power that we have?
if we could simply connect with ourselves enough can we commit suicide without an instrument or physical act?
maybe not.
maybe that was just a bad trip.
you know its a bad trip when Paula Abdul makes it better.
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fade
there are many ways
to let it fade.
grown alone.
given to
detatchment?
its back again
the doing.
the doing over the being.

yes, many ways to fade.
as many as there are
people.

the rules of detatchment dictate
forthwith
you should stop
engagement.

and you looked at me
there in the yard
and I backed smilingly
drunkenly away
in the sun
and watched you recede
and wondered if i'd missed
or was right to hold my tongue.
"if you need absolutely anything"
i heard echoing in my head
and you stood with that thought in your eyes
were you watching me go
knowing you would not see me again?
refusing to smile
refusing to let it be okay
needing the pain?
keep it.
i will suffer no more your weight
or the threat of imminent heartbreak
or the possibility
the truth that
I just wasn't
It.

and now, its true
that I do not understand
that i did not understand
that it was all lost on me
that the reality of moments
non-ethereal
cannot be made magic
by bullshit
by ignoring the elephant
standing on your crotch
by dreaming away into some abstracted interpretation
of real human emotion
explained
like Rube Goldberg
flips a switch

no, the next time, i'm on.
i'm in.
i'm there
with no analysis
do be do be do.
but she'll be scared
of you
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falling down
as I age, of course this will matter less and less to people around me...ill just become a graying marcher in the vast armies of mediocrity.
as long as i don't do any crazy shit like make sombody's head into a hat or drive my car through a church or something, the world will happily let me while away my time tucked away in some litte corner somewhere and they'll clean up all my shit when I kick off...in my sleep...after falling asleep drunk...after having been out at some party where i watched people dance and laugh for a couple hours before i threw my drink in the middle of the floor and walked out.
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