Midnight Oil

I am a restless dreamer, a savage insomniac,

a burner of the midnight oil.

You are my midnight oil.

Even now I am ignited by your artistry and love.

At 4 a.m. I walk past your place.

Looking up at the windows,

I remember the crimson curtains that covered them

and the artiste who sketched me in charcoal

in the room they sheltered.

...

But the drapes are gone now and your place is dark.

And the strip club downstairs is boarded up, shut down,

as if to say:

The grind is no good without the bump.

The peel lost its appeal since you went away.

...

Some distant, dizzy night we'd watched the dancers

come tumbling out of the club.

"Hunks of nocturnity,” we'd labelled those lads,

as the bachelorette partiers spilled out,

tripped down sidewalks, hailed cabs.

...

Did we discuss death to death beneath your skylight

as dawn announced her arrival?

Were you careening even then toward your early end,

already gripped by the virus that would fell you?

Even as you quietly stretched your youthful limbs

in the morning light?

Even as we sipped coffee

and scarfed down cherry Danish?

...

The sun cracks the horizon

and for one transcendental slice of golden time

you are with me again.

You say: “Annihilation and death are not the same thing.”

I reply, "Then that particular reign of terror is over."

But it’s not enough.

I want to know where you are, why you left, when you'll be back.

I am not the same without you.