**Hotchpotch Hippo Parade**
Orange, blue and pink
dripping from the kitchen sink,
sticky stars and marmalade
spinning through the window shade.
Hotchpotch afternoons collide,
bicycle planets rolling by,
cardboard birds with lemon eyes
flutter through the tangerine sky.
There’s a hippo in the hallway
wearing glitter on his shoes,
humming tiny radio songs
in electric shades of blue.
He says the moon’s a peppermint button
floating in a bowl of rain,
and all the clocks have melted backwards
down the copper weather vane.
Orange umbrellas growing feathers,
pink pianos made of foam,
blue mosquitoes playing banjos
on the roof above the home.
Hotchpotch people made of jelly
dance around the traffic light,
while the hippo paints the pavement
with a toothbrush in the night.
Candy clouds and paper oceans,
lazy elevators sigh,
telephones grow plastic flowers
every time somebody lies.
Orange cats with silver sideburns
sleep inside the laundromat,
pink balloons with blinking eyeballs
float above the welcome mat.
The hippo laughs in slow motion,
ripples wobbling through the room,
tiny planets in his teacup
orbit round a purple spoon.
Blue and orange, pink and silver,
everything begins to sway,
hotchpotch dreams inside a jukebox
buzzing softly till the day.
**Hotchpotch Hippo Parade**
Orange, blue and pink
spilling from the kitchen sink,
dripping through the radio wires
while the ceiling softly blinks.
There’s a hippo in the hallway
wearing marmalade cologne,
tap dancing on the tabletops
with a trumpet made of stone.
Hotchpotch afternoons are melting
through the tangerine TV,
all the clocks have started laughing
at the possibility.
The wallpaper grows seaweed curls,
the carpet breathes in tune,
tiny silver submarines
float around the moon.
Orange bicycles are orbiting
above the garden gate,
blue umbrellas full of jellybeans
arrived three hours late.
Pink flamingo telephones
ring inside the bath,
someone drew a motorway
across the cat’s moustache.
And the hippo keeps on grinning
through banana-coloured smoke,
blowing bubbles out the window
while the traffic signs all float.
Hotchpotch mornings in the sunlight,
hotchpotch evenings in the rain,
everybody swaps their shadows
on the backwards midnight train.
Orange, blue and pink
twisting through the lemonade sky,
paper planets spin like records
while the dragonflies drift by.
The hippo hums in stereo
beneath electric trees,
singing little rubber songs
to the marmalade breeze.
Hotchpotch dreams in cardboard castles,
hotchpotch stars in bowls of soup,
everything keeps folding softly
in a never-ending loop.
