solemn rampart
Slick silver snakes slide slowly seaward,
Singing soft songs of salty, shifting sand.
Six slippery sailors swab slick schooners
While storm-stung stars stand stern and grand.
Peter Piper picked a peck
Of prickly, plump, perplexing pears,
While prickly pears perplexed poor Peter
With painfully persistent pricking snares.
Betty Botter bought some butter,
But the butter Betty bought was bitter;
So Betty Botter bought better butter
To make her bitter butter better — fitter, glitter-bitter quitter.
She sells seashells by the seashore shore,
Surely seashells shimmer, surely shells shine;
Shorelines shimmer sharply,
Salt-sprayed, sun-splashed, serpentine.
A big black bug bit a big black bear,
But the big black bear bit back the bug;
Boldly the bug bellowed,
But the bear bore down with a bristling shrug.
How much wood would a woodchuck chuck
If a woodchuck could chuck wood?
He’d chuck quick wood, thick wood, slick wood,
If a slick woodchuck truly could.
Red leather, yellow leather,
Leather weathered, weather bettered;
Whether leather’s red or yellow,
Weather weaves it worn and fettered.
Round the rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran,
Ripping reeds and rousing wrens;
Rattling rain rattled roughly
On rattlesnake ridges and rusty pens.
Unique New York, unique New York,
New York’s unique and newly nuanced;
Noisy nuns knitting narrow neckties
Nodded neatly, nicely nonplussed.
Fred fed Ted bread and Ted fed Fred bread;
Bread fed Fred bred dread in Ted’s head;
Dread bred red threads that spread and sped
Through Fred and Ted’s threadbare stead.
Lesser leather never weathered
Better bitter batter;
But better batter splattered
When Betty’s bitter butter mattered.
Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair;
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t fuzzy —
Was he fuzzy? Barely there.
I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream;
Ice cream dreams stream in moonlit beams;
Creamy chrome cones crack and gleam
In crisp, cool, clover-colored schemes.
Toy boats bob on buoyant blue bays,
Boyish boatmen boast bold buoyancy;
Boats buoy boys in bubbly bluster,
Blue by blazing briny brilliancy.
Thin sticks, thick bricks,
Brick stacks snap and stick;
Sticky stacks of stacked sticks
Stuck slick to bricks too quick.
A proper copper coffee pot
Pops properly on polished plates;
Copper coffee, properly popped,
Percolates past punctual gates.
Sheep shouldn’t sleep in a shack by the shore,
Nor should shore sheep surely snore;
Short sheep should shop for sharper shacks
Where shallow shadows shake the floor.
Five frantic frogs fled from fifty fierce fish,
Fish flicked fins with flashy flourish;
Frogs flashed fearlessly forward
Through foggy fens of ferny flourish.
Crisp crusts crackle in cracked crock pots,
Clock hands clack in crooked clocks;
Clocks clack back in crisp click-clacks
While crock pots rock on cracked-up rocks.
Sly sly foxes swiftly flick
Flimsy flax on frozen floors;
Flaxen foxes fix fine flaws
In flimsy, flickering flaxen lore.
So if slick silver snakes still slide,
And Betty’s butter still turns bitter,
And Peter’s prickly pears persist —
Then tongue-tied twisters twist you quicker.
Say it swiftly, sharply, sure —
Let syllables spiral, split, and spin;
For twisted tongues tell timeless tales
Of tangled talk and tickled grin.
fathom plover
weak carbon