If I lay still on this couch, will you tell me if I’m a sufferer?

It's been a slow process to get back to writing again.

I hope you don't mind.

This is:

If I lay still on this couch, will you tell me if I’m a sufferer?

I need to know if I’m a monster,

The reason I ask,

I’ll tell you why

I don’t seem capable of dying

But I’m so far from alive.  

I seek dreams of the blessed

I sleep with arms crossed on my chest.

I awaken tired, nevertheless.

I rip others’ history and give it away,

replace it with magnetic tape memory.

Relentless failing abject misery  

I need to know if I’m a survivor,

The reason I ask,

I’ll tell you why

I don’t seem capable of dying

But I’m so far from alive.  

The turn of my situation here

Leaves what is left as traits too near.

Transformed into what I appear,

My virtuous principles do betray

Smudged and shaded outside their edges.  

What if pain of grief sharpens my teeth and weakens my nails?  

I need to know if I’m a sufferer,

The reason I ask,

I’ll tell you why

I don’t seem capable of dying

But I’m so far from alive.  

I feel it all, decay, all the time

Every single conceivable angle and line

All at once and again separately

I’ll write an unforgiving play

And perform it with dolls, painstakingly  

I need to know if my silence makes me a monastery

My counsel a sermon of scratched out names

A lectern of suffering preacher

Held clasped books laid on darkened shelves

High in the tower of the cranium, quietly a wretched creature?  

Through all the trouble

I keep on functioning

I keep on being.

Fluids keep on agitating

And I keep on strangling others’ sentiment

As gentle as sunset  

World of bones, dread of feeling

Lightbulb eyes cast upon me beaming

I need to know if I’m a monster,

I need to know if I'm a survivor,

I need to know if I'm a sufferer,

If what I am, I am not being.

The reason I ask,

I’ll tell you why

I don’t seem capable of dying

But I’m so far from alive.