Keyboard arrangement

Red fox (Vulpes vulpes) [photo: Jonn Leffmann]

When the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog, what next?

Quizzically orchestrated by vexed jazz-folk composer Wagner

– his mojo favours quite waxed zips – lo! an alphabetically arranged

fanfare! Banjo, didgeridoo, harmonica, kazoo, pipa, quena, vuvuzela, whistle, xylophone

build a wavering muzak from just quiet to an expert cacophony.

© C A Lovegrove

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Typists of a certain age will recall exercises of the quick brown fox sort designed to train beginners to touch-type. Each stanza here also includes all the letters of the English alphabet.

Palimpsest

Mind time can knot bee measured on a watch; mankind cannot be treasured, honour, swatch; kind man can nobly mesh, erred on a wok; mind games climb over Chinese whispers on a cloth…

Telling tails

Once upon a tern three birds went into a pub.

Said the landlord, Godwit you three, pelican I help you?

Are you raven mad? they crowed, Of course you toucan, a nightjar of your finest!

Wren they were served they were swift to reach out. Suddenly sniped the landlord: Hoopoe do you think you are, pay the bill before you swallow, or you’ll egret it!

Puffin out their cheeks they craned their heads this way and that and tried to stork the stork but the landlord began to owl: Stop swanning about, you bustards, or flamingo away before I skua you all!

They groused but they had to empty their pochards for change, eider that or duck.

Then, Cuckoo, said one, this ain’t half bad, what a lark!

You know, you’re twite, said the second, I’m really choughed!

Think gull avocet, quailed the third, I woodpecker another, let’s have some moorhen! Ptarmigan, landlord!

After they’d wrynecked their pints, Good heavens a dove, came a shrike, Look at the time! Good nightingale, we must pipit! And off they flew.

Alpha et omigosh

Image: WordPress Free Media Library

Aetiologically, behind church dogma
exist fairytales, glossed historical
in Jewish knowledge: legends,
mythological now our periodic questing
reveals said tales unverified;
voices waxing xenial, yet zigzagging.

A maze

Hedge maze (image: WordPress Free Media Library)

A
man,
woman
and a cat
amazingly
attracted my
attention: they
entered a zoo, flew
through a maze. Exits
blocked, quick as a
flash, cornered,
three jumped,
reversed, u-
turning,
and so
did
I

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• All alphabet letters appear
• Characters in each line increase and decrease incrementally
• Like a unicursal maze the centre is a dead end; the only option is to retrace your route to exit