Some Kinda Four 'o' Clock Tragedy

Tonight will be another sleepless night,
my eyelids falling like heavy black blankets
over my increasingly colorless eyes,
but not enough to call "game over!" and hit the sack,
and not enough to shake my legs around and call it dancing.

This has become some kinda four 'o' clock tragedy
where I can't even rest in peace with death by my side,
and I'm too familiar with that old wives' tale that
I'm too young to die, but too old to sleep.
I'm a careless restlessness grinding my teeth against
that age-old limbo.

And the idle shadow of death is the only shadow
in this room since I've made it quiet clear to my
caretakers that I want the night lights on (with the light
in this room as sterile and blinding as fluorescent life should be),
trying so hard to convey a purity that isn't really there.

And though death urges and pushes, goading
that I read pages by my bedside that've grown yellow and stale
or listen to music that has grown all all all all too rote,
I'll continue to gaze at that spectacular white ceiling until I collapse,
claiming a right to insomnia until my last
breath.