Sunday, May 24, 2009

CELLAR DOOR / ODE TO ADAM LAMBERT

by Lynnie Gobeille

i went to school i was very nervous , no one knew me, no one knew me
hello teacher, tell me what’s my lesson? she looked right through me
looked right through me…
and i find it hard to tell you, cause i find it hard to take
when people run in circles, it’s a mad world… it’s a very, very mad world.

I want to be the next Adam Lambert.
My poems unique in voice and style …
beamed off satellites
and sent around the world
covering every earthly mile.
Me, picked by the voter’s choice!
But with my luck?
I’d be voted off the Isle.
Perhaps I have my metaphors
and reality all confused.
I want to be Adam Lambert.
My poems to soar and rise,
make the audience stand to cheer
or weep real tears from their eyes.
I want to wear dark eyeliner,
black nail polish,
and a full length leather coat.
Walk into every room and own it
with some grand act
or words of a spectacular sort.
I would perhaps be boo’d off…..
the judges quickly dismissing me:
And all the rest of you?
My critics seated here? You’d
simply nod your heads and agree.
The audience might see… how badly
I want to be Adam Lambert.....
voting me the next runner up in poetry.
In truth, it is more likely I’d be stoned,
the critics tossing rocks and shouting:
this acts been done before.
The crowds would jeer this copy cat.
They’d bounce me out the cellar door.
Perhaps I will have to try to be
the next Billy Collins in all things poetry.
Learn to savor his words and rants
follow the formula, emulate his dance.
Or I could simply learn from Adam’s lead
strut my stuff and just be me.


Lynnie Gobeille has been published in The Sow's Ear Review, Crone’s Nest, Clear Creek Courant, The Avatar, The Prairie Home Companion, This I Believe (NPR), and The Poetry Loft (online). Two of her poems are included in The Writer’s Circle Anthology 2008. She is the Editor for The Poetry Corner in the Providence Journal South County Section, and is working on a collection of her poetry titled The Fine Art of Becoming Visible. Lives and writes in Wakefield, R.I.
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