Living, Will You

[Alan Sondheim]

Living, Will You


If I am incapacitated and my eyes no longer wander across your body, no
longer look into yours, kill me.

If I am in numbing pain, and looking into your eyes, and cannot speak, and
you will know, I cannot think, kill me.

If I am to be sent to an old age home, that concentration-camp portal into
death, kill me, do not force a waiting.

If I am useless, can no longer work or think, kill me, and if my work is
poor or repetitive, and I do not know, and I struggle uselessly, kill me
as well.

If I cannot control my body or its functions, if you are disgusted, if you
are living in sad memories, kill me, let the memories lives.

If you must watch the slow consuming havoc of cancer, the spread of body
against body, as we have all watched, kill me, I would not contaminate the
living.

If the world turns fascist to a greater degree, if you hear the final
knock at the door, kill me; know I will not be able to withstand.

If I beg you, kill me, without that flat dry voice when the world
dissolves for one last and silent time, kill me.

And if you tire of me, if the world tires, if I am pest or nuisance, if I
am cornered thing, or spectacle, or antiquated and irrelevant, of course
kill me, of course kill me.


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