Nick Moudry (Philadelphia, USA): "Imitations of Life"

I guess everyone should be windy
or hope sunlight butterfly.
It’s cold. People are cold.
Green yellow blue cold.
The sky is hope sunlight.
Butterflies fly over the city.
What joy & order. Poems
will always be trees.
Things, too, are trees.
Sunlight rooster telephone pole.
People are frozen & cannot
smile. They walk around.
Hope sunlight butterfly car.
Green car in the cold, cold ocean.
I like the illuminating butterfly.

People dream like oceans of butterflies
in the cold. People are cold.
I would melt them
but there is too much wind.
Have you seen my stapler?
It is over there by the corn nuts & the butterflies.
Oh, thank you. I have a green car.
It is an ocean. The telephone pole is
a car. People in the cold ocean.
Have you seen my stapler?
It is the ocean. Corn nuts
don’t get soggy. People do
unless they are frozen or singing
songs. Sometimes they are soggy
in sunlight & poems about corn nuts.
They staple things & stand in the ocean
looking dumb as poems. I like sunlight
when it’s windy. Windy sunlight. That’s a dumb
thing to like. So is coffee. I like green tea & roosters.
Rooster telephone pole, green rooster.

Blue ocean, hope of telephone poles. Things
look cold in the poem about people.
Yellow blue green orange. People hope
butterflies can live in the cold ocean.
They are adjectives. Cold adjectives in cars,
stapled to telephone poles. Have you seen
the green ocean? It’s cold.
There are no fish, only roosters & butterflies.
Hope cold sunlight green cars.
People are either cold or soggy.
I like corn nuts & brushing my teeth.
I live in a cold recycling bin. It is green
or blue. There are butterflies. They
are people drinking coffee.
People stand around like telephone poles.
Clothes hope stapled to them like sunlight.
Coffee is always cold. If you thaw a corn nut
it is not soggy. Corn nuts are recyclable.
People, too, are recyclable. They drink coffee.
It tastes bad. They are green roosters. The roosters
are telephone poles & frozen sunlight.

The telephone poles are frozen hope.
Corn nuts grow on trees. People grow.
That is why they are frozen. Butterflies
are not recyclable. They are too soggy
to live in the ocean like roosters. The roosters
eat corn nuts & drink coffee. They are dumb.
Their brains are no bigger than hope.
The sunlight is like cold cold coffee.
It is green. There are cars in it. The cars parked
next to the telephone poles have people in them.
People are ocean. The roosters cannot freeze.
They are adjectives. The ocean is full
of corn nuts. It’s windy. Things mean
nothing. They simply are, like corn nuts
& roosters in the sunlight of the recycling bin.
Have you seen my stapler? No, because
there are no adjectives except people drinking
coffee. I like tea. Roosters are adjectives
meaning nothing & drinking the ocean.
I live in a recycled tree.

Ocean sunlight ocean sunlight hope
of people in the cold.
The recycling bin is blue
or it is green. The green butterflies
hope the oceans are snow. In the recycling bin
the cold oceans hope recycling bins sunlight
cars. The cars sunlight bins of recycling hope.
I tree the poems dumb. People dumb
poems hope ocean. Blue yellow green
cars ocean hope. People hope are dumb.
Dumb people hope oceans are cold.
Roosters live in soggy corn nuts. They are
too frozen to be cold. Cars orange
yellow oceans cold. People dumb
the cold roosters cold. I live in a recycled ocean.
Cars sunlight poems hope. Cold
cold is dumb or blue. Oceans
recycling bins ocean the dumb trees
into telephone poles. Have you seen my stapler?
It is a dumb ocean. Things ocean the
yellow butterflies hope sunlight people.

  © Nick Moudry 2005