How I Start My Day
I piss but let’s not show that on the YouTube camera.
I wake up hot because even though I’m naked beneath a fan
I’m 52 and fat and female. I started bleeding when I was 14
and all these decades later I still identify as Sissy Spacek as Carrie.
I wake up my spirit with sound. Spirituality is important.
I tell my Higher Self: Wakey wakey, Bitch. Let’s do this thing.
When you realize “You Oughta Know” was inspired by a sitcom star
and Yoko Ono recorded “Death of Samantha” a couple of weeks
after John Lennon fucked another woman at a party
you will put down the Versace purse filled with Armani lipsticks
and eyeliner and maybe pick up a fucking guitar.
Tarot can tell you why Jason finds you fuckable
but The Lovers in reverse over The Queen of Wands
won’t tell you why you still care.
I rehydrate with Costco alkaline water.
This makes me feel rich, seen, somehow important, even relevant.
I’m really doing something here.
I’ve got this being alive on the only known inhabited planet thing
down to a fucking science.
I go to Fl Studio because I am a producer, a composer, a trash noise musician.
I pretty much defy genre but let’s call it post punk future funk dream noise
and leave it at that. I’m not trying to be Taylor Swift over here.
I go to Canva Pro. I create a dynamic thumbnail, usually a collage featuring
black tape silver tape red tape and at least one pair of puckered up lips.
I go to Audacity. I clean up the noise, stretch it out, turn it into something
David Lynch could light a cigarette to beneath cherry red neon.
If David Lynch could see me now he would say something like,
“You’d make a great character actress, baby.”
I never was Laura Palmer.
I was too awkward to be Audrey and too Texan to be Donna.
This is as good as I’ll look without plastic surgery and who has time for that?
It took me five decades to find Andrea Dworkin.
She wore overalls because there was work to be done
and there isn’t anything cute about pig blood.
I say good morning to the ancestors, aliens, spirit guides, angels, demons,
perverted cosmic voyeurs. Whoever the hell is listening.
Donde usted siempre gana. Es bueno. Muchas gracias.
I strum my outta tune pink guitar. I don’t know any chords. Not important.
All the necessary songs have already been recorded by greater mortals.
I know I’ll hear “I Am The Walrus” for at least the first 200 years
when I finally die. Then I’ll hear “Dazed and Confused.” Then “Aneurysm.”
Then “Doll Parts.” Then I’ll hear “Walking The Cow” and that will excite me
so much I’ll reincarnate as a boy in Sri Lanka. At some point in my day I gotta
get things going with a line of coke. I gave all my cash to the homeless guy
in a Spurs jersey so here’s this plastic yellow straw. Okay. I lie.
This is cane sugar. I am showing off for a global audience.
This is lazy performance art.
I’m terribly stupid for someone who has read and written so many books.
Roger Rabbit. I need a new habit.
Dental hygiene is important. So is organic watermelon.
So is some kind of cardio.
I don’t wear makeup. It doesn’t really help at this point.
I love MAC lipstick. Ruby Woo and Russian Red are fire, as they say.
I wish my teeth were whiter.
I wish people wouldn’t describe me as a white woman.
Nothin’ I can do about none of that.
We’re stuck on color and several other things on this planet.
Where I come from there is no plastic and the only color is ecstatic,
too ecstatic to be contained in any conceivable box.
I can explain it but I can’t understand it for you.
Keep it simple.
Be kind to others and do at least one thing each day
that makes no sense to anyone but you.
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.
End transmission.
“How I Start My Day” is included in Misti’s forthcoming book of poetry and cassette, Super Cherry Extra, coming soon and available at the Underground Lit Fest in Toledo on November 7-8.
Misti Rainwater-Lites shuffles tarot cards to keep the lights on and scribbles lines and makes sick beats to maintain a semblance of sanity while melting from triple digit heat and menopause in San Antonio, Texas. She does it all for the nookie so you can take that cookie and shove it up your ass.
