The poem is free verse and steeped in the slang and cultural references of the 1960s, a decade which encompassed all of King's teenage years. It describes the unique burial of the titular young man, a hippie who died of leukaemia, and the subsequent lives of his closest friends. The poem's themes, of the inevitable effects of age and mortality, make it something of a memento mori. The aforementioned introduction's suggestion, that Tommy is based on a real person, place it in the confessional genre of poetry. (Although, in the intro to Bazaar's following story, "The Little Green God of Agony", King states that he is not in the business of confessional fiction.)
