cities grow outward
like angry amoeba —
false-feet stretching down
the motorway corridors,
and developing tumors
that will metastasize
into cities of their own,
sprawling until they span
the global petri dish

Cities pretend to sleep.
They fool us.
Eyes close.
Darkness settles.
In the deep of the night,
a city is like a kindergartener during nap time —
fidgety and mischievous.

When Tokyo’s trains shut down at midnight,
far from hibernating in suspended animation,
the city traps people in a dimension
that most people never see —
a headachy, eye-rubbing,
fuzzy-minded
land of waking dreams.