View From My Balcony

Sitting on the balcony in my new red chair - it has a beer holder, you know - while reading Sigmund Freud's "Three Essays on Sexual Theory", watching a large green & yellow butterfly feed from white & red flowers & listening to the sparrows squabbling, the crows complaining, I thought of the first three lines of a song/poem: "I stayed up all night sweating & all day betting that you'd walk out on me" but now on my walk along the river nothing else comes, there's just the rush & slap of the Sumida, the whisper of traffic, the steely sighs of the trains, bicycles intermittently interrupting my thoughts because the Japanese are a "no, you" "no, you" people, indecisive, wobbling biddies who turn at the last moment, schoolgirls texting while riding, &, now, back on the balcony, the song/poem rears its head once more, "like a ritual blood letting, the sun of our affair setting, no more love, no us, no we... Good job I've given up writing poetry... Deary me...