Bobby Part One

Bobby from Walthamstow

playing in the Hollow Ponds

Baby boomer Robin Hood

shrinking the forests 

of Epping and Sherwood -

getting lost on the Debris

Whose copper father cheated

and moved the family to start again

but who even after

saw that Scottish father

laughing in a passing car

with his mistress

and had to hold that in

like a lungful of poison smoke

waiting for a new bomb to land

Who hid in black and white

as the horror started to hatch

cheered as Cagney self-immolated

and Bogart said

‘the stuff that dreams are made of’

Who lost himself in the flicker

and in the mirror found

a copycat Belmondo

lip-curled and pomaded.

Whose mother dropped dead

in the middle of a family fight

aged fifty four -

No angels came, just a dozen uncles

on their police motorcycles.

Dad, when did you put on your armour?

A waistcoat and a cine-camera

North London Clyde Barrow

sneering at the Beatles

and the stiffs who towed

the nine to five

Dad, you found your own dad dead

when you were twenty one

What pills were those by his bed?

What had he taken?

What did you say to him?

What carnivorous corkscrew

chewed down

to make its nest?

Who met a girl who bought

the thoughtful bad boy bit

and so began

the fifty two year conundrum

of the rebel without a cause

but with a wife and kids

Who rode a time of change

with Baudelaire and Bergman

listening to the String Band

smoking black and dropping acid

Who found in Brighton 1970

a city-sized family…

I’ll leave you there, Dad,

as I cannot hold you in a single poem.

I’ll come back, I promise,

and write you something better.

I haven’t even been born yet.