Prose Poem: The Mighty Bopp.

 

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.