Hunting the Boojum

[Author's Note: This was a poem I wrote for a creative writing course in college. It is inspired, thematically, by Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark.]

There was a time I thought to hunt a boojum,
It having caused my friends to disappear,
Die, have inverted colors.
We asked Alice, anonymously, to lead us
To this land of wonder that contains the boojum
And other frabjuous things.
Alice grabbed a darner, ready to impale.
I sharpened and honed my blade, a vorpal affair,
As I honed and sharpened my skills, running through the forest,
Slaying that which fell into my path.
Packing provisions, we found a flat-tailed accomplice
Who was ready to leave the dam, giving nary a damn
To his home, ready to help me gain my revenge.
Grabbed he his cleaver and told me thus:
“Beware the snark, my friend,
His guise deceits, his snorm fossy.
I shall snicker him in the end,
with my cleaver, frubulent and gossy.”
We went there thus from his house on the river
And found the nefarious knoll.
There we set up camp, drinking,
Smoking.
Eating baked beans, cooked over a small campfire.
Whittling, or chewing wood, depending on who we were.
My flat-tailed accomplice awoke me one night
During my fit of slumber.
“The portal has opened in the scrombulous grounds,
And the time we have is wainful,
Hurry your lodd (and your sniffulous wround)
For the opportunity is gainful.”
We left our camp, bringing our sacks,
And leapt into the porthole, ready to face the boojum.
The land we faced was bizarre and foreign.
We were surrounded by ferious plants and trees.
I spotted a strange creature as we journeyed,
Readying my vorpal, I asked my flat-tailed accomplice,
“Be that a boojum?”
He replied,
“Nary and non, a boojum not that is.
For he is tame, and timid and feek.
Carry, anon, we shall soon see this:
A boojum in the skesh, that’s what we seek.”
We settled by the riverside, awaiting the sun to set
For it was Alice that told me,
“A boojum wou’n’t be caught in the daytime.”
Thus, the moon rose, and the jabberwocky wailed.
The flat-tailed accomplice sharpened his cleaver
And clicked his teeth.
“Methings the boojum wishes to die,
For nortal and grimly is the ebb and tide.
The waves, they crinkle, crash and cry
(For they just crinkles, crashed and cried).”
We set off when the sun had fully set
Seeking a boojum.
The moonlight glinted from my vorpal,
Likewise the cleaver and darner.
Lo and behold, we found the boojum.
It was stalking by the seaside,
Sniffling and snuffling, and making dross.
The boojum we crept behind and made light work
Of his hide with our blades.
Goosh went his back.
Sqloosh went his side.
Moosh went all the rest.
By the light of day, Alice peered upon the starchy corpse.
We smugly beheld our victory over the boojum
When a man came out to us
Yelling:
“Oi, what have ye done to me potato!?”
The boojum was a tuber.