Madison Burke -Journalist

Aphrodite You do not love, in its entirety. You are dedicated to variety. You let your windows up in wintertime, You don’t mind the icy breeze. The wind bursts and hurls, Every frame holding faces Of the ones you claim to love. You wait for your Adonis. You waste time for a dream. The sands of time trickle, Not caring that you are now wrinkled For the ones you claim to love. You have children that grow up. You hardly notice their passing. Their laughs were never loud enough, To stir your heart and make you forget About the one you claim to love. You let your windows up in wintertime. You forget about the breeze. The wind dusts the time off your face, So you may still look beautiful, For the man that will never come

Inland Empire Oasis I am from a place where the Inland Empire expires, Without a trace of guns and desert heat. Instead orange trees put down their roots, And children eat organic food. I am from the house in between the “groves,” Farmland turned into grand driveways For doctors and ESRI employees   to get away from each other Downtown Redlands holds hipster storefronts, Homemade foods, Nitrogen Icecream, and Fondue. We stand on the sidewalks without cash, Watching the doctors pay $7 for a scoop of milk. Skater Krater, surrounded by shrubs, Is filled with kids smoking spliffs with paint on their hands. Grafitti, small tags, roaches and memories. Paint layers on top of paint, we’re so high. We all gravitate towards Augie’s coffee, Through Prospect Park, To talk about leaving Redlands. Our parents sit inside. Redlands is caught in time, it has forgotten to progress. Go down the street to the milk store, There is still the dri...

Charlie Charm’s             Charlie Charm’s liquor store is swamped full of the seedy, the needy and the young. Overly skinny women stand in line with their Smirnoff Ices, homeless men buy bottled shots at the counter, and students repeat the information on their fake ID’s to remember their fake identity. Sequim, Washington is a small town outside of Seattle where there are less locals than there are people that move through it. Charlie Charm’s gets more traffic than it does revenue and is home to about 200 homeless, who prey on those that drive through.               “Next.”             Penelope walks up to the counter, she ignores the people around her; she has eyes for her bottle of Bacardi only. Digging through her purse Penelope sees that she is ten dollars short and shoves the bottle into her bag. Jesse, th...

Complete Sanity In a group insanity is at its most heightened form. One cannot be insane if one is the only person to judge. Reality is so flimsy that at the slight of hand one can easily change one’s surroundings. None of us are cookie cutter, and none of us can fit through exact molds of sanity. We all carry a small bit of insanity in us whether we like to admit that or not. Hardly any of us will greet our insanity by the hand or in conjured hallucinations. But yet again what is insane. If I am over here talking to what my mind has come up with, than I am completely sane in my own reality. Fuck your reality, mine is the only one that I can see. One day, when I have no senses to rely on and I’m old and prone. Feed me bits of your reality. I want to taste everyone’s insanity. To feel you and your universe, and to understand where you come from. Until then fuck off.