Five poems by Misti Rainwater-Lites

Five poems by Misti Rainwater-Lites


Strangled

Yum was the word for three finger sucking flame licking

moonglow basking months. How I leapt without looking.

How he loved my skinned knees. He could not catch me

but that wasn’t his job. How we fucked while the pizza baked

crispy brown. How we ran after the ice cream truck in the rain

went back to my studio apartment treated ourselves to some

sweet melting sex on the futon. How my brain went haywire

when he wasn’t around. Ripping art from the walls tossing dolls

and books and a television set across the room. He was not

the broom to sweep my messes under rugs. He was not the prince

to ascend my tower via my braid and rescue me from my overprotective

witch mama. We drank vodka gimlets and decided “Tangled up in Blue”

was our song because it played on his car radio the morning after

our first night together when I was married soon to be divorced.

We hid from the world until it barged in with a disease we’d

never heard of and an eviction notice. He is sleeping now. I watch

his face. Love invades me like a kudzu vine. I am strangled with

tenderness. All the water underneath the bridge is placid now

and the color of clear green marbles. I don’t howl at the moon.

The moon is a mother’s face. It is mine. I glow down on him

soothing him from all that we have survived protecting him

from all that awaits down life’s endlessly twisting

shadowed mindfuck of a road.

********************

We’re All Bat Shit Crazy up in Here


If I max out my credit cards on JcPenney’s clothes & shoes

& Macy’s cosmetics & stuff that will disguise the funky musk

of my pussy from Bath & Body Works he’ll love me like ice cream

need me like heroin & he’ll leave the struggling watercolor artist

who lives on Ramen and tuna to be my toy even though her tits

are bigger than mine and she’s too phlegmatic from weed and

six planets in Pisces to be neurotic.


I can do this. I can do this. I’ll find a way. A way to work it out

without falling apart like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.”

One full-time job one part-time job. I’ll finish my book and find

an agent. Three hours of sleep every other night. Energy drinks.

Coffee. The occasional Cape Cod treat. Need more money for

food cable rent car insurance car payment electricity gasoline

toilet paper deodorant diapers stamps date night with wife

twice a year. Take phone calls from pissy cell phone customers.

Pretend to care. Get a promotion. Move to Portland. All problems

solved. Neat. Complete. A jigsaw puzzle of a hot air balloon.


Tired of trying. Too many hoops to jump through. Do I look like

a poodle? America is not my circus. Too many faces discounting

mine as invisible. The owners of the companies tell me to trust

Jesus and everything will fall into place and I’ll have a wife

and kids and a house in the country and hell even a dog and a horse

and a trampoline like them. I laugh and take a dump in the warehouse

before walking out tossing my badge over my shoulder. I don’t need

Jesus or a truck or a bed to fuck in. There is no Blue Fairy to tuck me in all starry and sweet telling me someday soon I’ll be a real live boy. I’m wooden. I’m hard. I’m a puppet without strings. No whale will

swallow me. All I need is wilderness to get lost in. Land that is free

no fences no signs no shotguns aimed at my hard wooden ass. I can

live like that. I can sit on the dirt and play songs for the trees my gods with my Cherokee flute.

Silicone implants. Botox. A thousand calories a day. Hair extensions.

Sprayed on tan. Acrylic nails. Gucci bag. “Sex and the City” aspirations. Self-promotion at MySpace. 999 friends. I’m a star. People will wish on me when I’m dead. I’ll live to be 116. Vitamins. Colon cleanses. Carrot juice. No red meat. No cigarettes. No sugar. Condoms. Yoga. Indestructible blow-up doll.


********************

Not Very Delicious


couldn’t seem to convince the brown bear in my dream

that i am not very delicious

he stood in the kitchen staring me down

like i was rainbow trout i stood on the table

running my mouth hoping to prove that i was too crazy

and mean-spirited to be tasty but for some reason the bear

would not budge his tongue hung out dripping saliva i told

the bear i was only a B cup i showed him my unruly black bush

knowing he would lumber off in the opposite direction

then he mutated into a skinny ambivalent twentysomething

white man and i

was saved

********************

My Brother


You’re the lonely stretch of Texas highway Seymour to Wichita Falls

more melancholy than Hank Williams songs and generic Christmas cards.

You’re the teardrops in colorful glass bottles some Baptist preacher told me about once when trying to console me. You are still two years old inside my head sucking your thumb holding onto a tuft of your jet black hair while I read Little Golden books to you giving the animals silly voices to take the heartbreaking hopelessness out of your big blue eyes. You’re the polar bear with discolored fur sweating it out in the San Antonio zoo. You’re a beach on the Gulf of Mexico that no one visits. You are me whenever I am looking out to sea dismayed by the oil rigs and the ugly grayness of the water, wishing I could see nothing but turquoise waves

all the way

to the horizon.

********************

Oh, Buttercup, Things Always Work Out in the End!


rehab

suicide attempts

psychotic attachments

mommy love

daddy hatred

not enough protein in your diet

airbrushed celebrity comparisons

unrequited crushes

crumbling pyramid

of needs

all designed to improve your poetry!

make you super strong, scarier than the incredible hulk!

you will be a special bitch

a bitch not to be fucked with

you will be an angel sword burning in hand

igniting the blue and green gob that god spit out

with truth!

passion!

clarity!


Author bio:

Misti Rainwater-Lites writes a lot of poems and the occasional novel. Her poetry has appeared online and in print in Poesy, Zen Baby, Zygote in my Coffee, Nerve House, St. Vitus Press, Yellow Mama and many others. Misti is also the editor of Instant Pussy, a monthly online poetry zine. Her self-published poetry collections and novels are available at Lulu.com.