challenge accepted

we live in an age where orangeclad
stiltwalkers strut city blocks
executing yellowshirted bears
for no other reason than
the colour of their clothes

where single mimes smuggle
salmon to work in their overcoats
so they have someone to talk to
while they shop for silence
on their packed lunch breaks

or perhaps alarmingly where sleep
deprived mask makers in the early
hours of dawn sniff the saddles
of their wife’s puppet’s bikeseat
to discover the odour of burnt cathedral bell rope
                                                                                               up
breaking into fragments, like thoughts               adding
sadly subtracting … when all around you are

NB: after struggling to load the erasure app for 25 minutes (flash was playing up) … I decided to abandon the official prompt & try to accommodate three of my facebook friends’ (I use the term lightly, given how obnoxious their challenges) requests for things to put in a poem. This surreal piece of nonsense effectively includes every single request (16 in total) … if perhaps at the risk of the poem making any sort of sense. Though I suppose I could pass it off as a dream poem & Bob’s my male relative.