Thang-ya-ahh-verru-mush

When I was six and desperate to be Batman,
to wear a cape, crusading through the darkness
of Gotham City, I’d poise, in character,
up on the chook-shed roof, then leap across
to grab the weeping branch of the willow tree
and swing, an unforeseen agent of Justice
amidst the villains, knocking them left and right:
though once my masterful trajectory
set me a-sail, like Superboy, through empty
air, a dizzy hurtling, with my cape
fluttering magnificently behind,
and me cut free from earth—but all-too-quick
ensued a metamorphosis to myth
as belly-first, spent Icarus, I crashed
into a stump, the wind knocked out of me
in agony of trying to inhale
till Mum retrieved me. Later, all of twelve,
I studied to be Elvis, coifed my hair
high in a gravity-defying wave
with one curl breaking free across my forehead;
mouth slack, one corner of the upper lip
lifted in sneer, a challenge to all parents.
Later still, my sneer became Byronic:
as rock’n’roller turned to versifier,
now wrapped in Byron’s dark Romantic cloak;
the curl across the forehead still served well.
Then later—but the story replicates
on down the years, with each new super-hero,
and each new set of props and gestures merely
substitutes for those that went before—
though Elvis set the final paradigm
when he put on that silly short white cape,
and slack-mouthed, sweating, dazzled by the lights
slurred Thang-ya-ahh-verru-mush—a plump white blimp
who also leapt to metamorphosis,
and still sails through the air, empty of legend.