Poem by Wayne Russell

the mad ones

oh give me the mad
any day over the sane
give me
the drunks
the wanderers
the reckless recluses
the homeless vagabonds
the thieves of the night
the wreckers of cardboard boxes
in the virgin dawn
the catchers of beer buzzes at 9 a.m.
to combat last nights hangover.
give me the stars
not painted by            the normalcy
of the great
“I am”.
give me the belly laughs of lunacy
found inside the roadside juke joints
that my father used to reside in
night after night after night
not the pseudo throaty chuckles
that you may find in business seminars
after the stalest of jokes.

Photography © Allison Goldin

Wayne Russell’s work has been published a few times over the years in such literature anthologies and magazines as Fat City Review, Harbinger Asylum, and Far Off Places.

Allison Goldin is an artist living in Cambridge. Her work is a collection of spontaneous drawings from the imagination. The most common link throughout her art are the semi-recognizable creatures scattered amongst and bringing together the surrounding doodles. She is currently studying Illustration at The School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.