This week’s Little Vines.

5105.
Dr. Jacuzzi, the nurse said, please listen to me
We have a lot of glue to reorganize.
You did the best you could. Now go wash up.

5106.
and now I stand, freezing in place
madly madly drunk on six-pointed stars
falling from the frigid night sky
into my cupped hands

5107.
there is a change coming
carrying itself high, blowing out wide
stripped naked and nothing to hide

5108.
socks
dancing pensive jigs
in the slow tumble of the elderly dryer

5109.
my mother
never far from her needle and thread
she repairs what others have broken

5110.
the snail labors
assembles a theory
ponders. acts. too late.
the quick fingers pluck him from the wall.

5111.
Sparks and crackles from the fire
The old stories drone
The disappointed who tell them turned sour –
But life awaits. Leave here now and catch it.

5112.
the alligator snapping
from the depths of the cesspool
the bee flying from flower to flower, unheeding

5113.
I’ve put a zillion dollars in the bank.
The cemetery sleeps thousands.
I can’t buy my way into another outcome, can I?

5114.
the sunburned face of the bartender
the scavengers across the bar
who sit on their stools in a sly row

5115.
very bad hair, yes, all of it very bad –
the whole situation is unpleasant. the hairdresser
chooses twenty-odd targets and begins to snip.

5116.
The clock sprays out the hours
under a loveless sun.
Don’t bother me. I don’t owe you a thing.

5117.
pale sour concrete smell
buried
in the walls of the building

5118.
this highly contagious cleansing mania
currently sweeping our town – aka everyone we know
has decided to get divorced

5119.
I step hard. My left shoe
pushes the crushed insect aside.
Sorry, but somebody always has to pay.

5120.
So you were knocked unconscious
but you continued to dance at the Club Skeleton
until 2 AM? That’s your alibi?

5121.
what of the fair-haired man
and his magnifying glass –
what of the ant peering up at him from the sidewalk?

5122.
the field of tulips
a crowded dance floor
a mosaic of heads nodding to the beat

5123.
You knew my brother then.
He hasn’t changed.
Pack a suitcase. It’s best not to linger.

5124.
at each table in this coffee shop
the carefree and the suspicious alike
confess secrets that will not be kept

5125.
how you do float
in a moonlit swoon
lying on your back in the warm green ocean

5126.
actors mumbling out the lines
crushed by the ponderous plot –
can that be us, the population of Earth?

5127.
I prefer deadly and cheap.
I follow the rules as I understand them.
The guilt is over.

5128.
the last pearl
crushed underfoot this morning
on the seventh floor
by a singing roisterer left over from last night’s party

5129.
a vile pink snow in August
hissing earthworms in the sink
so you see why I have no time for pleasantries