Hair slicked back and flecks of grey
patterned like tv static,
not nearly enough
to quell the allure of Toby Trousers!

Headest of Honchos,
his posse but thieves,
he straps charisma to words like
radioactive bullets, piercing the hearts
of all who converse, flashing money
and smiles, and disarming with wiles
his marks and his targets
with relative ease.

He stands at his table, King Arthur
he projects, to his right a hand
he would never reject, a stout
fellow of few words, with polished
bald head, Jimmy Sneakins is the
fellow, he trusts with his death.

“Fellow, brothers,”
he states ceremoniously, hands clasped
while ears align,
“I have the big one, the career ender,
our finale, as it were, the stars themselves
have danced across my sky
and now they pattern positively
for us all, the signs are good
and we will walk away
our fortunes rampant, our
appetites sated, and never
shall we need to work again!”

The crew of confounded cons stirs
and murmurs, Jerry Shambles raising
his burnt eyebrows in perplexion
and thought, his lips rippling as
his snakelike tongue slips across
his teeth.

Jimmy Honkins, Sneakins’ blood relation
chuckles with disdain,
disbelieving the boss’ baritone bold briefing,
his own wry smile hooking cheeks
into wary and distance,
Honkins is not easily fooled.

Toby Trousers takes command again,
hands hushing, his motions like
that of patting a plateau,
fingers like twigs, though not as brittle,
settle and wrap around each other
as he hunches over and
conspiratorially chomps at the bit.

“Would I lie to you, of all people,
my compadres, my brothers in arms,
think of our conquests,
of our majestic liberations
over these thirty two long
years, and remember, remember
why we got together, why we formed
this group of gallivanting Galahads!
Why, not only to line our pockets,
thicken them with the fabric
of wealth, but to change the minds
of those with it all, to steer
their paths over less used roads,
where they could make those differences,
where the oft unknown, become
the seldom invisible!”

“Spose not, but boss, you said
this white whale of ours was
a pie in the sky, head in the clouds
unobtainable affair, and we agreed,
all of us, that we’d dream only,”
Honkins proffers
while Shambles mulls, the squad
of four as tight knit as wool,
but with certainty it shall never
be pulled over any of their eyes.

“Things, as so often they are wont
to do, change, and with changes
and alters, we have our gangway
to greatness, our plank, gentleman
is ours to walk, but we shall
dive into riches that even Davy Jones
cannot keep from us!”
Toby Trousers raises his fist,
supreme certainty the soup de jour.

“Fancy words from a sly fox,”
Shambles states, his brow furrowed
while his throat gurgles, a drainpipe
too rusted from years of neglect,
“Can you back them up?
Can you utter a semblance of
faith, that we shall not stride
through gates unless pearly?”

Toby Trousers grins once more,
one final smile, one final stare,
one last salute to the commodore,
“Gentlemen, colleagues, family,
I, offer you this,
my words. Not one, but all
my words.”

Gasps and hushes and whispers
and patter,
and this quartet of
criminals bunches together,
and they talk and they natter,
they collaborate and they gather,
and the world turns on by
as the gentlemen try
to piece together a strategy
for the crime of the century.