On a Scale from
1 to 10

By Morgenrede

weakness
weakness
weakness

magic growing animal capsules (just add water!), pokemon card pack opening vids on youtube, Neurontin calculator, penguin caffeinated peppermints, http://www.dell.com blue mousepad, nivea cocoa butter;

election year 2024
waking up depressed
sleeping in all day
another fight with lilly
she moves to NC soon
i go outside, it’s dark, it’s 9:30pm,
my neighbors gunther and tom
are grilling meat
out in the front yard;
tom is grilling chicken,
gunther is grilling fish;
i walk over as gunther is telling a story:

“i tell ya why im not cooking the chicken — i was with this girl awhile back and we had this chicken coop that i built, it was filled with chickens that she’d raised and it was really awesome until, well, one of our egg-laying chickens was kinda getting older and one day she woke up acting really weird, wings were at half flap, moving around real slow, she was just moaning out sick sqwuaky cries, and she wasn’t like herself, so i took it upon myself to volunteer and put the thing out of its misery; so, I go get my knife, it’s the one that has a long blade, didn’t have a cleaver, i line up the neck of this soon-to-be-dead fowl with one hand and, granted ive been a fisherman my whole life, not a farmer, and this lil cocksucker was brain-dead still for the most part, but when i brought down the knife the feathered fucker jerked away and i missed the neck, i missed so damn bad I just cleaned off a huge chunk of the chickens face, i did the dumb thing and looked down, i could see the half-sliced brain inside this animal’s half-skull and i make eye- contact with the chickens barely liquid half-eye and after a second she sqwuaks as loud as she can, her legs and wings all start kicking out independent of one another and my girlfriend shouts at me, “JUST FUCKING KILL IT, JUST KILL THE FUCKING THING, GOD HOLY SHIT,” this makes me jump and bring down the knife again and that time I cut through the head and sever everything above the beak; the headless creatures was convulsing bad, a tiny stream of her gut fluids started squirting out from her neck pipe for a good few minutes, and eventually she, well, you know, the body stopped moving and the head parts stopped twitching — so yeah, that’s why i opted to cook the fish tonight, you want some?;”

tandoori chicken, grilled scallops, halibut and cod, homemade ceviche and slaw, grilled corn with lime crema sauce, mango salsa, fried indian rice with egg and onion topped w/ yogurt, strawberry tiramisu, dates served alongside dark-cherry chocolate covered cashews;

sorry i’m out of likes;
you make me want to kill myself standing up;
is today a good day, i don’t know;

you feel the orgasm in your eyes and your hips, your entire stomach is numb, your heart beats slower but harder, you push yourself deeper into the bed, you sink deeper, you feel heavier, you twitch and let your body react naturally, muscles free to flex and curl;

Journey Motel Court
Kimbles fish market
Crumpys hot wings
Red Fox venue and lounge
HD cable free installation

“oh wow, momma, look at this pee cup,
i drop this thing and it goes boing!
that rhymes! that’s a rhyme!!”

i saw you online,
i was always online,
you knew that too;
internet imagery is beautiful,
but you are just a stress fuck;

hamburger helper killed bob marley
>(actually no it was acral lentiginous melanoma);

pressing the PCA Pump button until your spirit lulls behind your shadow;

foreign man on a couch reading the dictionary while a bag of coke sits on the coffee table in front of him, he scans the page and pronounces the first word he sees: “pixelate;”

old people getting mad in fresh market for literally no reason;

Medications 6/2012 –

Simvasatin 20 mg bedtime
Coreg 25 mg take ½ 2 x day
Aspirin 325 mg coated x da
Capoten 25 mg 2x day
Isosorb Mono 30 mg 1, 2x day
Klor-con 20 md 1x day
Lasix 40 mg 2x day
Nitro Pump as needed
Feno Fibrate 160 mg 1x day
Buropion 200mg 2x day
Warfarin 6mg day
Allopurinol 300mg 1x day
Hydrocodone 5mg at bedtime
Flexaril 10mg at bedtime
Gabapentin Caps 300mg 2x day

“How was my day? Well, the inpatient kids were out back pulling their pants down and showing their bottoms, and come to find out, they also were showing their fronts, too. Kids, man, I don’t even know;”

“My grandad used to be a psychiatrist for the guys locked up over by the jail. He stuck around though after his shift and chatted with the musicians that’d play for the inmates. One of those musicians was Johnny Cash. Dad told me one time that he snuck out of granddaddy’s house while he was at work and got so drunk that he accidentally drove into Johnny’s fence. Lucky for him, cops never got called, Johnny figured out that my dad had the same last name as my grandad, its one you can’t ever forget. This led to Johnny callin’ grandad, who said that daddy was gunna rebuild the fence and he’d be able to come back home for supper once the fence was completely finished;”

maybe my voice can travel up from my gut and go directly into the ears of the clouds;

fist through window,
arm in a bucket,
death poop;

Grinding lilly flowers in a crucible;
Did you know that donkeys stalk coyotes?
Kayla Diamond a1 sauce eye-roll content;

“well then, maybe I am a god;”
“you know, that is eat up with cool;”

peaes
on.erth

watching early seasons of masterchef junior and placing bets on which kids end up getting overwhelmed with fame and become addicted to hard drugs;

“this new guy came into the kitchen and he hadn’t really done much work on the line before but we knew we could train him, he just seemed nervous, eventually i asked him during dinner if he’s sure he can do this and he looks at me and lifts up his shirt, on his stomach is a bag of some kind, “it’s a colonoscopy bag,” “oh,” “during a lunch rush i may have to go and empty it, so uh, just letting you know,” after a few shifts the new guy is getting the hang of prep and hasn’t made too many mistakes, but i do notice him wincing every now and then, so i ask him what’s up and he tells me sometimes the tape that keeps the bag connected to the stoma (the opening that leads into the bowels) will come undone when he sweats and the inside fluids will come out and burn his skin;”

The Flies That Feed on Your Grandfathers Eyes;
Wiping people out is making us suffer;
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deijman by Rembrandt
“i have to ask, does the future scare you, too?”

incision sounds,
bloodletting,
brain matter,
the body grows old,
then the body goes cold;

“Mommy is getting eye surgery so she can see the small letters on the Tellavision;”

“i remember being with the trauma-surgeon the most, one day a lady came in and she’d been attacked by two dogs, when we took the bandages off her legs i, i mean, i expected to see bone, ya know, tibia and the fibula, but i didn’t see any mangled bones, i didn’t see anything white — it was all just red, disconnected flaps, dead worm-like bits of leg –– her blood is still stained into my work shoes;”

“what sound did the wasps make when you blasted them with that blowtorch”
“well, the wasps just kinda started popping, like kernels of popcorn, pop, pop, pop;”

the problem with wanting to live forever is that you forget what eternity is made of, what it feels like— it is not the eras of war, nor the periods of growth, but rather, it is the simple struggle of living through every painful moment of every painful day, for these moments build-up and lead us into truly believing in the immortality of our beliefs, our practices, our art, our pain, and our potential;

Morgenrede is a mid-southern man with two cats who loves to binge-watch Jacques Tati and Akira Kurosawa films, drink beer on his porch, and write about his life experiences.