"Streaker Boy"

A lifetime ago
But I can still picture
Crystal clear
As if you were still here
Right next to me
Not Michaelangelo's David
But Don Bosco's Kelvin
Who was a fellow Salesian boy,
Except I never felt like one
More marooned in SW eleven
Not a Battersea schoolboy of choice
Another mistake, Mutti
One among many
As always not listening to my voice.
I know you did love me
It's just that I was fourth
In your pecking order
Out of a shortlist of four.
I knew my place
Yours was a love
That dare not speak it's name
As was mine for Kelvin
My first schoolboy crush.
It was you I dreamed of at night
Blonde hair and melt my heart smile
As you ran naked
Down the corridor
At the Latchmere Baths
As cheeky and naughty
As a boy not yet born
Bart Simpson.
Where are you now Kelvin?
Married? Two point two kids?
Or hit the skids?
Washed up? No life?
And no looks...
Just like me now too.
Frozen in time
You will always be in my head
The boy from nineteen eighty
Even if you're actually dead.
Forever a boy
On the cusp of maturity
Maturing into a beautiful young man
Who I never knew.
My one regret at leaving
Salesian College behind
Is only seeing you in my mind.
One thing for sure
You will have forgotten me
Not even able to recall my name.
But don't worry
That's not a problem.
For I am content just to be able
To remember yours
Kelvin Picton
Of two beta
My streaker boy.

Dulwich Poet 10th July 2013

(Memories of a boy at secondary school, who loved to streak down the changing rooms corridor, after swimming lessons at the local pool. It wasn't the school I wanted to go to, but my older brother went there, so was made to, too. I was the only one from my primary school to go there.)