Ode to Johnny

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
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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!

By: Shelley Franchini

Note: This poem was the big winner in The Tyee’s Teen Angst Poetry Contest.

http://thetyee.ca/Fiction/AngstPoety/2005/08/15/