Push the Button, Frank

We've all had the feeling. It's late. You need some rest. After all there's that thing and the one you forgot today and the person who has to know something asap or it will be too late. Okay. All lined up and ready for the morning. Your body is a mass of nervous tired. Covers up. Light off. You slowly close your eyes and

BOOM! Breasts! FIRE OH MY GOD FIRE! "Sure but what does he know? I mean..." DEATH! Indy 500 CLOSE UP! A Jetta commercial on speed. "It's the square root of EVIL!" Bodies writhing for the DANCE. Snakes DYING!

Open eyes.

Shit.

Is this what speed is like?

Shit.

You can't turn it off. Channel a big ball of light or a stream. Try to remember what silence sounds like. Tell the world to fuck off and hope it forgets you soon.

This is, I'm sorry to say, a regular occurrence with me. I wanted to attribute it to genius, but since I can't seem to find any empirical proof of that, I now call it overstimulation. It took a while to find the conscious relaxation technique for me. Here it is for your edification or entertainment.

It is pitch black. I walk forward, hand out. I touch a doorknob, cold brass and smooth. Turn and enter. A billion lights on a control panel. A plane or mad scientist playset. I move forward and begin slowly switching off the sharp points of light, feeling each move reducing power in the ship or machine or whatever. I do this systematically for about a minute. Each 'off' reduces the tension in another part of my body. Click. Left foot. Snick. Right hand. That's when I see it. A comically large, red button at the top right. How did I not see it before? Failsafe. Master Dead Switch. Yeah, like the one at the gas station. Hit the button, Frank. I palm it hard and it all goes down. Everything. Every light. Every sense of power. The hum I wasn't even aware of drops from tenor to bass and dissolves to nothing.

The Titanic. Night. April 14, 1912.

Suddenly I am in a lifeboat, safe and distant. All at once the massive liner goes dark, lifeless. I'm not cold as the hulk lurches to the left the moonlit water like a giant finally dying on the horizon. I've left the great vessel of life and am beginning to float further out into the darkness. It's not scary. I'm warm and the world's want gives me a bye. It's okay. Just go. You won't be missed. Everyone understands. You've done just fine. I stop worrying about every little thing I am expected to remember when I wake. Whom to love. The dates of war. mad motor skills. Whom to leave alone. I smile. I breathe. I leave behind even the darkness.

Goodnight.

Road Trip

Half drunk on his own sad, he croons badly to his country. Salt on his tongue, he smiles, thinks about running away from statues and spotlights towards things hell bent in the wind. Hands and knees on dirt. Spanish spat in slurred anger. The rights of stars. Falling back in roadside bushes, tumbling the world down a thickened vision, it's due south and saying somethings are rightfully ignored. Forgotten on purpose.