Impressions

My 90-year-old neighbour prayed for me to be safe in Tokyo.
Three hours’ sleep for the woman running the country.
If she took the metro, would she sleep there?
Smoking areas don’t get announced.
“Remember Kanda Square Hall! Remember the hall!”
There’s no shade in Zen gardens.
In my hometown we’re short on shade too.
But here nature is too high-maintenance.
Enough with the best sellers: rent your own little library shelf in Jimbocho.
“Anto-san! Your order is ready.”
A four-storey manga bookshop doesn’t tell me much.
But the girl with the pink t-shirt reading her pink book does.
At 7 A.M. a young man lies at the bottom of the stairs,
30 degrees. Is he breathing? Where are the Toyoko kids?
I hide on the balcony with my e-cig while crows look at me.
They’re from the smoking police, I know.
Animals are people’s little friends,
waiting for you to pick them up from the shop window
telling you where to go and when to stop.
A clean city with no trash bins.
While I speak to a bird standing on my backpack
a mommy rat and her little ones
walk through the smokers at Senso-ji Temple
searching for the smell of the outcast.
Sounds of nature in the Tokyo metro
before you fall asleep
in the women-only carriage
as you wait to go back to watch the sky.