drifting - a very rough copy of a tanka sequence
drifting depressed because my books weren't nominated for a Lammy fierce like Plath’s “great African cat,” I have let things slip the flowers need water but they weigh me down with the present of life eat everything I breathe like dangerous animals, free, and completely empty gift nameless, flat, black and white intrusion of eyes I am a new persona caught in a neurotic stillness, anesthetized until there is little, if anything, left to do but sleep I dream about alcoholic binges one night stands in bathhouses where the thick vapor of lust fogs my sense of identity and cold mouths suck on my face I am wrapped inside my own mirror laughing, struggling with my pride until I break loose step on the needle shards of my life tamed, old, fat looking for a way out of this room where I once felt the need to write about myself until the tulips turned red the guilt