Reasonable

You know it makes me want to cry
So much beauty and so much ugliness.
Essential as bread and water
Eating off each other,
Playfully.

I know, yes I know about my eyes.
So much desolation and so much celebration.
Depth as fathomable as is reasonable.
Like no other,
Feasibly.

The city knows it, the trees know it, the hills know it.
I know it,
Yet why is nature so determinably beautiful?
Why is the weather so irritatingly seasonal?
Why is it my face looks so bloody awful!
And why do I cry when I say something reasonable.

I can feel the stream, entering me, washing through me,
Scouring the dirt and revealing what's underneath.
I can feel myself as an exhibition - people pay to enter,
To look around, to observe.
I can see mountains, like the backs of rested cats.


On Manchester, Summer 1988