CHRISTOPHER'S PENNY


Christopher Jessop steals a penny.
His hawk-eye swoop selecting any
But the old and dulled from crust and rind,
Patina'd from their daily grind.
He pockets a belief that luck shines new,
With a flourish of his his wrist to enhance and accrue
An enchantment beyond the Mint's Royal form
But a mock magicians vanity mis-invokes the charm
And a pen'eth bright talisman to ward off strife
Begins the miscalculation of the rest of his life
As Christopher audaciously chooses his worth
From Fortune's coin-fat, sow-ear purse.
Fate does not expect to be picked,
Chosen, stolen, manipulated, tricked.
Destiny plays on empty selves,
Sturdy bookcases of vacant shelves
Where volumes amass and pages unfold,
Connecting the chapters of lifetimes told
With counter plots that combine and cleave
As chance encounters interweave
Each symbioses episodic code,
Bound, titled, embossed and stowed
Upon oaken ledges across spine-lined walls,
While driftwood libraries of penny-dreadful lives
Are the pulp and plunder of pirated archives.


Postulation is his coin-tossed way
Of little to do about much to say.
Arrogance intoning superior stance
Promptly flicks the penny askance
To barely skim Friendship's crown
As self-indulgence spirals down
Its centrifugal, gyroscopic fall
Sucking attention from one and all.
A desperation perfectly able
To systematically make itself stable
By the duplicity that dwells behind the eyes
Where fierce heat actuates cool surmise.
The sycophantic swooping on samaritan prey
With his talons drawn for their deeds of the day,
Ready to translate each charitable act
As a matter of dutiful, subservient fact
While Flattery's fists uncurl their plea
To deliver impassioned falsity
Abundant with gratitudes empowering request
And chaining Goodwill to bogus behest.
A concave belief boasts a mute penny's charm,
Enforced by the hand with the begging-bowl palm
Of Christopher Jessop's obsequious game
Where Grandmaster versus the timid and tame
In his faking of a path to a victory at last


Christopher's penny bribes a belief
In self-exemption from misfortune's grief
To focus the fanaticism in dementia's eyes
Through desperation to delusion's disguise
Of foppery chancing a brocaded arm,
Languidly cradling the gilded charm,
Loquacious in pretenses of grandiose ability,
Elaborating his non-existant nobility
With a wile both witty and debonair
Able to outstare what is not there.
Where an unremarkable coin was found,
Plumes and kerchieves trail the ground,
Bowing and scraping to an imperious role
In deference to Christopher's splendid soul,
Baroque etiquette beckons admiration
With curlicue gestures of self -adulation.
Until the penny's charisma tires
And egotism's patina conspires
To rewrite itself in parody
With melodrama's tragedy
Of error eluding shame,
Prompting bigotry to recast blame
In zig-zag acts of counter-claim
As scripted accusation through turns of rage
Where justification exits the stage.



A shiny penny, a deliberate fake,
An amulet inducing the ultimate mistake,
A deviation across Christopher's palm
Heralding elitism's dysfunctional charm
Whereby he over-supposes himself
A crust above the upper-shelf,
An attitude throwing choice
Out of the mouth and through the voice
To assume assertion's delirious pride
Covering in one misguided stride
The dead-step distance of a cul-de-sac
Where cement never sets beneath soft tarmac
So he browbeats certainty into Fate's round hole
In angular accordance with his self-styled role
Of bonhomie brimming fear,
City sorcerer and urban seer
Tipping elation to spill distress
Laced with a tantrum's verbal prowess
Of inaccuracies summoning an image-mirage
To spellbind his faery entourage
With wizardry's wind-bag affectations
Expounding long-bearded incantations
To compound fracture a frail wish-bone
As magus minus alchemist's stone
Melds head-call ego to tail side coin.