On a foggy, frog-choked night
I was visited by the ghost
of Kay Kyser.
His wavering whisper gave me
to understand there was
connivance afoot.
And I must spend millions
to dig it out, root and branch.
So I went to see the Mighty Bopp.
Now . . . I can't give you all the details;
there are too many lives at stake.
But there were ballots on an island
in the middle of a lake called Nimue.
Missing ballots. Hidden for centuries.
I was to bring them back.
Even if I had to hire
the Varangian Guard
to do it.
The Mighty Bopp promised
that if I could bring those ballots
back in time,
virtue would triumph.
We marched through canebrake and enchanted glebe.
We camped amidst nettles and hardened muesli.
Our rations were just butterless scones and frisked out milp.
Nuncios barred our path, but we scattered them
by chanting 'Crinkum-Crankum.'
When we reached the Lake Nimue
the water was flecked with bosco petals,
while the murmuring scent of shaken ferns
stirred our souls to the quick.
And far out on the flaxen waters
stood the Isle of Lost Ballots.
We waded in.
The mud pulled at our spurs.
Slimy weeds slithered up our thighs.
We hacked our way through walls
of agar agar until the ballots
lay at our feet,
fetid and complicit.
My burliest men shouldered them
back to civilization --
we lost half a dozen
good men in an ambuscade by
Cornish pasties before we reached
Headquarters.
Only to find that our ballots,
for which we had spilled our blood,
had turned into useless tin whistles
at the stroke of midnight.
And so . . .
the Mighty Bopp had struck out.
