storeeze

Wassup your butt, Beta? Thing from Miletus fits guys in one place. Borrow your thing? Baby got no bread. Baby Doll got no bread? Kick it to the Rock. Who's playing? Santayana & the Realms. Put on your pads, color your lips, and agitate the gravel. Yer bazooms flatter the bums.

Lysistrata ("Army Disbander") is a Greek comedy by Aristophanes, first performed in Athens in 411 BC. Lysistrata is on a mission to end the war between Athens and Sparta with a sex strike by the women.   Beta— A young woman. A girls ’ night out could play a part in a modern rendition of the play. She'll be soon back, enjoying it more, having made the point. Person Two—another young woman Thing—a dildo Miletus—a Greek trading post on the west coast of now Turkey, known for its dildos. Rock—the Acropolis in Athens,  a religious and civic center . W omen were generally not allowed there , but  they had  access during certain festivals or religious ceremonies . Bazooms—they’ll crash the Rock by showing their tits.  Santayana (keys)—the modern philosopher famous for the Four Realms: essence (alto), matter (trumpet), truth (bass), spirit (drums). Pads— footwear or falsies. Agitate the gravel— for  peeling out.  Punctuate it—an explet...

My first sense of a Higher Power walked in with death: Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. —Child's bedtime prayer, 18th century Before my mother taught me the prayer, I had had no thoughts about death or God. Afterward, those were all my thoughts. The prayer, a childhood favorite then, established a supernatural realm and the agency to connect it with the material world. It reminded children of the impermanence of life and the certainty of death. It promoted the curious idea that the sovereignty of the prayer would reassure children before bedtime, and preserve the innocence of childhood slumber after its recitation. Can this be right? How could I go to sleep if I might not wake up? Terrifying. As we prayed together each night, she taught me to pray for others. Would they die, too? This sad bedtime poem generated more questions than answers. What is a soul? Where would the Lord take it? Why co...

Barry’s roadster pressing vapors and clouds, foggier and doggier. Silver stanchions lamp-lit the stage. Coronas, dreamy signs billboards— The Arch bathed in blue light. Hearing your voice out of the fog, I wish I tasted your eggnog laced with whiskey, long sips…

On the sunny afternoon of 8 August 1970, a courier dropped the daily casualty report on my desk. The day prior, Charlie Company had been investigating a suspicious area in the bush. Capt. Martinez, who inclined toward the unusual, had set up an LP (listening post) beyond the wire to detect anyone sneaking around. An LP was the least popular assignment and most unsettling, because the enemy owned the night. Two of the newest men in the unit, an FNG (fucking new guy) and SP4 Pondextuer Eugene Williams, a vet from The Big Red One, were put out there in no man’s land. They were huddled around their radio  like tethered goats,  listening to night noises  for tell-tale signs,  when a Viet Cong snuck up and planted a mine. The blast took Williams' head and critically wounded his companion.  Doc Gerrits went out to check. Williams was done for, so he treated the wounded man. Taking care of your buddies is utmost. Williams’ friends were shaky because of recent enemy ...

While stumbling around the Internet today I ran across "Refusal to Bury." It brought back a lot of memories because I am the  Ron  Martz cited in the piece. When that story was dropped in my lap I was in my second month of my first newspaper job after dropping out of college after two years. The story resonated with me because I had spent three years in the Marine Corps prior to college (1965-68), the last 18 months working in the Casualty Section at Headquarters Marine Corps (they sent me there because I could write a simple declarative sentence and type with all 10 fingers; an oddity in the Marine Corps at the time). I remember the day Mrs. Campbell walked into the newspaper office and told her story first to Dick Lundin, who was a part-time correspondent for us who wrote about community affairs in Port St. Lucie, Fla., a planned community just south of Fort Pierce. He wrote the first piece about it and then the story was handed to me, in part because of my militar...

Amidst old smoke  and stale perfume of a broken night, a seraphic voice posed a question in the dark— “Have we spoken?” In the green room,  yellow gloves lay on a coffee table. She lit a cigarette, gazed at the fine rain. I took her scent,  felt her breath. Her nostrils flared — an arabesque veil of smoke drifted into cloudy gray-green eyes. A hot blush came to my cheek. “Your blood is warm.” She forced a laugh, blew a jet  from under dark lashes. “I adore Coblenz. K iss me. ”   She tasted of tobacco  and stale mint. Her bosom swelled, a tremor crossed her face. “Would you like a trip to Greece?” White-velvet breasts. C-section. painted nails  on a cold-hard floor. I woke to a curving figure  staring in a mirror — wide-brimmed hat, black-spike heels, cigarette,  eye-liner — headlights in the drive, shouts at the front door.