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Teen Angst Poems

'Ode to Johnny'

The big winner in The Tyee’s Teen Angst Poetry Contest. Warning: hold your nose.

Shelley Franchini 15 Aug 2005TheTyee.ca

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[Editor’s note: Thanks to everyone who entered. We’re sure you’ll agree this really is the worst.]

At the age of 13, in the basement of my best friend, Sandra McDonald, I wrote these classic words.

I hoped that John Travolta would make his way to my middle class, Canadian, suburban neighbourhood. With youthful optimism on full throttle, I honesty thought John Travolta, just might read my pledge and take me back to this native Brooklyn, where Sunday family dinners awaited me: plates of saucy pasta, mingling amongst his Mafiosi relatives, and the embrace of a round, warm, Italian woman who wouldn’t call me a slut if I wore my sky blue spandex pants and roller boogie t-shirts to dinner.

I left “Ode to Johnny” in the rose decaled drawer of my white Captain’s bed, hoping to intimidate my own mother with a silent threat to leave her for John Travolta. Her only response was “Are you on the drugs?”.

Oh Johnny I love you come and take me away

Oh Johnny I love you come and take me away

I see you as a sunset shining over me

I see you as a river, strong and shimmer’y

I see as my hero, your strength you own to me

Oh Johnny I love you come and take me away

Oh Johnny I love you Come And Take me…

AWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYY! [Tyee]

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