Have you ever seen a dead body?

I have only seen a dead body in pictures or at the funeral home. I often go to rotten.com or it's sister site, boners.com (check it out, it is pretty funny sometimes). These two sites have tons of pictures from police files and curious bystanders. Pictures of dead bodies, crazy accidents, pictures of limbs with no torso, torso with no limbs, heads with no brains, heads with no bodies, okay you get the picture (literally, is it forming in your head right now??). I think it is amazing how you become desensitized to something like that. I am so curious to look, I am grateful for the pictures so I can sit and stare closely at every detail. It is also crazy how the body takes on the essence of a manequin almost, like it is not real and I am in some wax museum. I think if I came upon a dead body in it's first and natural state, my feeling would be different. My 2-D safety net would be broken and I think I might throw up or run away even. Isn't it weird how if it's a picture of something you can convince yourself that it is not real, some how staged? Is it the smell? The lingering heat of the body? The feel of the spirit in the air? Even at funerals, you look at the body with the waxy skin and too much make up and think "that's not real". To me, they never look like they are "sleeping". Maybe it is the knowing of the ins and outs now that I am older (and thanks to too much CSI & 6 Feet Under), the stitches that hold together the mouth and the eyes, the skin taught, the muscles and limbs stiff and unbending with rigor mortis. Just like anything that is dehydrated, dried, and in that stage right before decomposition, when you realize how important water can be. When I die, I would love it if I was just allowed to rot back into the earth like nature intended. Fuck the embalming, God forbid some freak will try to get busy with my corpse. Desecrate my body, but not my soul because it will be gone. An empty vessel, waiting for the fire that will engulf it and turn it into what it was from the beginning, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

"After nine days I let the horse run free
'Cause the desert had turned to sea
There were plants and birds and rocks and things
there was sand and hills and rings
The ocean is a desert with it's life underground
And a perfect disguise above
Under the cities lies a heart made of ground
But the humans will give no love"