The Soft Machine

Screen eyes vibrate through the city like electric dogs sniffing for violations—

Remind the Board of the unsavory case of "Black Paul" who bought babies with centipede jissom—

When the fraud came to light a whole centipede issue was in the public streets and every citizen went armed with a flame-thrower—So the case of Black Paul shows what happens when all sense of civic responsibility breaks down—

It was a transitional period because of the Synthetics and everybody was raising some kinda awful life form in his bidet to fight the Sex Enemy—The results were not in all respects reasonable men, but the Synthetics were rolling off that line and we were getting some damned interesting types by golly blue heavy metal boys with near zero metabolism that shit once a century and then it's a slag heap and disposal problem in the worst form there is: sewage delta to a painted sky under orange gas flares, islands of garbage where green boy-girls tend human heads in chemical gardens, terminal cities under the metal word fallout like cold melted solder on walls and streets, sputtering cripples with phosphorescent metal stumps—So we decided the blue heavy metal boys were not in all respects a good blueprint.

I have seen them all—A unit yet of mammals and vegetables that subsist each on the shit of the other in prestidigital symbiosis and achieved a stage where one group shit out nothing but pure carbon dioxide which the other unit breathed in to shit out oxygen— It's the only way to live—You understand they had this highly developed culture with life forms between insect and vegetable, hanging vines, stinging sex hairs —The whole deal was finally relegated to It-Never-Happened-Department.

"Retroactive amnesia it out of every fucking mind screen in the area if we have to—How long you want to bat this tired old act around? A centipede issue in the street, unusual beings dormant in cancer, hierarchical shit-eating units—Now by all your stupid Gods at once let's not get this show on the road let's stop it."

Posted everywhere on street corners the idiot irre-sponsibles twitter supersonic approval, repeating slogans, giggling, dancing, masturbating out windows, making machine-gun noises and police whistles "And you, Dead Hand, stretching the Vegetable People come out of that compost heap—

You are not taking your old fibrous roots past this inspector."

And the idiot irresponsibles scream posted everywhere in chorus: "Chemical gardens in rusty shit peoples!!"

"All out of time and into space. Come out of the time-word 'the' forever. Come out of the body word 'thee' forever. There is nothing to fear. There is no thing in space. There is no word to fear.

There is no word in space."

And the idiot irresponsibles scream: "Come out of your stupid body you nameless assholes!!"

And there were those who thought A.J. lost dignity through the idiotic behavior of these properties but he said:

"That's the way I like to see them. No fallout. What good ever came from thinking? Just look there"

(another heavy metal boy sank through the earth's crust and we got some good pictures. . .) "one of Shaffer's blueprints. I sounded a word of warning."

His idiot irresponsibles twittered and giggled and masturbated over him from little swings and snapped bits of food from his plate screaming: "Blue people NG conditions! Typical sight leak out!"

"All out of time and into space."

"Hello, Ima Johnny, the naked astronaut."

And the idiot irresponsibles rush in with space-suits and masturbating rockets spatter the city with jissom.

"Do not be alarmed citizens of Annexia—Report to your Nearie Pro Station for chlorophyll processing— We are converting to vegetable state—Emergency measure to counter the heavy metal peril—Go to your 'Nearie'—You will meet a cool, competent person who will dope out all your fears in photosynthesis—Calling all citizens of Annexia—Report to Green Sign for processing."

"Citizens of Gravity we are converting all out to Heavy Metal. Carbonic Plague of the Vegetable People threatens our Heavy Metal State. Report to your nearest Plating Station. It's fun to be plated," says this well-known radio and TV personality who is now engraved forever in gags of metal. "Do not believe the calumny that our metal fallout will turn the planet into a slag heap. And in any case, is that worse than a compost heap? Heavy Metal is our program and we are prepared to sink through it. . ."

The cold heavy fluid settled in his spine 70 tons per square inch—Cool blocks of SOS—(Solid Blue Silence) —under heavy time—Can anything be done to metal people of Uranus?—Heavy his answer in monotone disaster stock: "Nobody can kick an SOS habit—70 tons per square inch—The crust from the beginning you understand—Tortured metal Ozz of earthquakes is tons focus of this junk"—Sudden young energy—I got up and danced—Know eventually be relieved—That's all I need—I got up and danced the disasters—"

Gongs of violence and how—Show you something— Berserk machine—"Shift cut tangle word lines—Word falling—Photo falling—"

"I said the Chief of Police skinned alive in Bagdad not Washington, D.C."

"Switzerland freezes all foreign assets."

" Foreign assets?"

"What?—British Prime Minister assassinated in Rightist coup?"

"Mindless idiot you have liquidated the Commissar."

"Terminal electric voice of C—All ling door out of agitated—Ta ta Stalin—Carriage age ta—"

Spectators scream through the track—The electronic brain shivers in blue and pink and chlorophyll orgasms spitting out money printed on rolls of toilet paper, condoms full of ice cream, Kotex hamburgers—Police files of the world spurt out in a blast of bone meal, garden tools and barbecue sets whistle through the air, skewer the spectators—crumpled cloth bodies through dead nitrous streets of an old film set—grey luminous flakes falling softly on Ewyork, Onolulu, Aris, Ome, Oston— From siren towers the twanging tones of fear—Pan God of Panic piping blue notes through empty streets as the berserk time machine twisted a tornado of years and centuries—Wind through dusty offices and archives —Board Books scattered to rubbish heaps of the earth —Symbol books of the all-powerful board that had controlled thought feeling and movement of a planet from birth to death with iron claws of pain and pleasure— The whole structure of reality went up in silent explosions—Paper moon and muslin trees and in the black silver sky great rents as the cover of the world rained down—Biologic film went up.. . "raining dinosaurs" "It sometimes happens. . .just an old showman" Death takes over the game so many actors buildings and stars laid flat pieces of finance over the golf course summer afternoons bare feet waiting for rain smell of sickness in the room Switzerland Panama machine guns in Bagdad rising from the typewriter pieces of finance on the evening wind tin shares Buenos Aires Mr. Martin smiles old names waiting sad old tune haunted the last human attic.

Outside a 1920 movie theater in East St. Louis I met Johnny Yen—His face showed strata of healed and half-healed fight scars—Standing there under the luminous film flakes he said: "I am going to look for a room in a good naborhood"—Captain Clark welcomes you aboard this languid paradise of dreamy skies and firefly evenings music across the golf course echoes from high cool corners of the dining room a little breeze stirs candles on the table. It was an April afternoon. After a while some news boy told him the war was over sadness in his eyes trees filtering light on dappled grass the lake like bits of silver paper in a wind across the golf course fading streets a distant sky.

WAS WEIGHTLESS—NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE PARIS APRIL 17, 1961—"One's arms and legs in and out through the crowd weigh nothing— Grey dust of broom in old cabin—Mr.

Bradly Mr. I Myself sit in the chair as I subways and basements did before that—But hung in dust and pain wind—My hand writing leaning to a boy's grey flannel pants did not change although vapor trails fading in hand does not weigh anything now—Gagarin said grey junk yesterdays trailing the earth was quite plain and past the American he could easily see the shores of continents

—islands and great rivers."

"Captain Clark welcomes you aboard."

Dead Fingers Talk

Glad to have you aboard reader, but remember there is only one captain of this subway—Do not thrust your cock out the train window or beckon lewdly with thy piles nor flush thy beat benny down the drain— (Benny is overcoat in antiquated Times Square argot) —It is forbidden to use the signal rope for frivolous hangings or to burn Nigras in the washroom before the other passengers have made their toilet—

Do not offend the office manager—He is subject to take back the keys of the shithouse—Always keep it locked so no sinister stranger sneak a shit and give all the kids in the office some horrible condition—And Mr. Anker from accounting, bis arms scarred like a junky from countless Wassermans, sprays plastic over it before he travails there—I stand on the Fifth Amendment, will not answer the question of the Senator from Wisconsin: "Are you or have you ever been a member of the male sex?"—They can't make Dicky whimper on the boys—Know how I take care of crooners?—Just listen to them—A word to the wise guy—I mean you gotta be careful of politics these days—Some old department get physical with you, kick him right in his coordinator—"Come see me tonight in my apartment under the school privy—Show you something interesting," said the janitor drooling green coca juice—

The city mutters in the distance pestilent breath of the cancerous librarian faint and intermittent on the warm Spring wind—

"Split is the wastings of the cup—Take it away," he said irritably—Black rocks and brown lagoons invade the world—There stands the deserted transmitter— Crystal tubes click on the message of retreat from the human hill and giant centipedes crawl in the ruined cities of our long home—

Thermodynamics has won at a crawl—

"We were caught with our pants down," admits General Patterson. "They reamed the shit out of us."

Safest way to avoid these horrid perils is come over here and shack up with Scylla—Treat you right, kid— Candy and cigarettes—

Woke up in a Turkish Bath under a Johannesburg bidonville—

"Where am I you black bastards?"

"Why you junky white trash rim a shitting Nigger for an eyecup of paregoric?"

Dead bird—quail in the slipper—money in the bank —Past port and petal crowned with calm leaves she stands there across the river and under the trees—

Brains spilled in the cocktail lounge—The fat macho has burned down the Jai Lai bookie with his obsidian-handled .45—Shattering bloody blue of Mexico—Heart in the sun—Pantless corpses hang from telephone poles along the road to Monterrey—

Death rows the boy like sleeping marble down the Grand Canal out into a vast lagoon of souvenir post cards and bronze baby shoes—

"Just build a privy over me, boys," says the rustler to his bunk mates, and the sheriff nods in dark understanding Druid blood stirring in the winds of Panhandle—

Decayed corseted tenor sings Danny Deever in drag:

They have taken all his buttons off and cut his pants away For he browned the colonel sleeping the man's ass is all agley And he'll swing in 'arf a minute jor sneaking shooting fey.

"Billy Budd must hang—All hands after to witness this exhibit."

Billy Budd gives up the ghost with a loud fart and the sail is rent from top to bottom—and the petty officers fall back confounded—"Billy" is a transvestite liz.

"There'll be a spot of bother about this," mutters The Master at Arms—The tars scream with rage at the cheating profile in the rising sun—

"Is she dead?"

"So who cares."

"Are we going to stand still for this?—The officers pull the switch on us," says young Hassan, ship's uncle—

"Gentlemen," says Captain Verre "I can not find words to castigate this foul and unnatural act whereby a boy's mother take over his body and infiltrate her horrible old substance right onto a decent boat and with bare tits hanging out, unfurls the nastiest colors of the spectroscope."

A hard-faced matron bandages the cunt of Radiant Jade—

"You see, dearie, the shock when your neck breaks has like an awful effect—You're already dead of course or at least unconscious or at least stunned—but—uh—well —you see—It's a medical fact—

All your female insides is subject to spurt out your cunt the way it turned the last doctor to stone and we sold the results to Paraguay as a state of Bolivar."

"I have come to ascertain death not perform a hysterectomy," snapped the old auntie croaker munching a soggy crumpet with his grey teeth—A hanged man plummets through the ceiling of Lord Rivington's smart mews flat—Rivington rings the Home Secretary:

"I'd like to report a leak—"

"Everything is leaking—Can't stem it— Sauve qui peut" snaps the Home Secretary and flees the country disguised as an eccentric Lesbian abolitionist—

"We hear it was the other way around, doc," said the snide reporter with narrow shoulders and bad teeth—

The doctor's face crimsoned: "I wish to state that I have been acting physician at Dankmoor prison for thirty years man boy and bestial and always keep my nose clean—Never compromise myself to be alone with the hanged man—Always insist on the presence of my baboon assistant witness and staunch friend in any position."

Mr. Gilly looks for his brindle-faced cow across the piney woods where armadillos, innocent of a cortex, frolic under the .22 of black Stetson and pale blue eyes.

"Lawd Lawd have you seen my brindle-faced cow?— Guess I'm taking up too much of your time—

Must be busy doing something feller say—Good stand you got whatever it is—Maybe I'm asking too many questions— talking too much—You wouldn't have a rope would you?—A hemp rope?

Don't know how I'd hold that old brindle-faced cow without a rope if I did come on her—"

Phantom riders—chili joints—saloons and the quick draw—hangings from horseback to the jeers of sporting women—black smoke on the hip in the Chink laundry —"No tickee no washee—Clom Fliday—"

Walking through the piney woods in the summer dawn, chiggers pinpoint the boy's groin with red dots— Smell of boy balls and iron cool in the mouth—

"Now I want you boys to wear shorts," said the sheriff, "Decent women with telescopes can see you

—"

Whiff of dried jissom in a bandanna rises from the hotel drawer—Sweet young breath through the teeth, stomach hard as marble spurts it out in soft, white globs—Funny how a man comes back to something he left in a Peoria hotel drawer 1929—

1920 tunes drift into the locker room where two boys first time tea high jack off to "My Blue Heaven"—

In the attic of the big store on bolts of cloth we made it—

"Careful—don't spill—Don't rat on the boys."

The cellar is full of light—In two weeks the tadpoles hatch—I wonder whatever happened to Otto's boy who played the violin? A hard-faced boy patch over one eye parrot on shoulder says: "Dead men tell no tales or do they?"—He prods the skull with his cutlass and a crab scuttles out—The boy reaches down and picks up a scroll of hieroglyphs—"The map!—The map!"

The map turns to shitty toilet paper in his hands, blows across a vacant lot in East St. Louis.

The boy pulls off the patch—The parrot flies away into the jungle—Cutlass turns to a machete—He is studying the map and swatting sand flies—

Junk yacks at our heels and predated checks bounce all around us in the Mayan ball court—

"Order in the court—You are accused of soliciting with prehensile piles—What have you to say in your defense?"

"Just cooling them off, judge—Raw and bleeding— Wouldn't you?"

"I want you to smell this bar stool," said the paranoid ex-Communist to the manic FBI agent

—"Stink juice, and you may quote me has been applied by paid hoodlums constipated with Moscow goldwasser."

The man in a green suit—old English cut with two side vents and change pockets outside—will swindle the aging proprietress of a florist shop—"Old flub got a yen on for me—"

Carnival of splintered pink peppermint—"Oh Those Golden Slippers"—He sits up and looks into a cobra lamp—

"I am the Egyptian," he said looking all flat and silly.

And I said: "Really, Bradford, don't be tiresome—"

Under the limestone cave I met a man with Medusa's head in a hatbox and said "Be careful" to the customs inspector, freezed his hand forever an inch from the false bottom—

Will the gentle reader get up off his limestones and pick up the phone?—Cause of death: completely uninteresting.

They cowboyed him in the steam room—Is this Cherry Ass Gio? The Towel Boy or Mother Gillig Old Auntie of Westminster Place? Only dead fingers talk in braille—

Second run cotton trace the bones of a fix—

But is all back seat dreaming since the hitchhiker with the chewed thumb and he said: "If decided?

— Could I ride with you chaps?"—(Heard about the death later in a Copenhagen bar—Told a story about crayfish and chased it with a Jew joke out behind the fear of what I tell him we all know here.) So it jumped in my throat and was all there like and ready when we were sitting under the pretties, star pretties you understand, not like me talking at all I used to talk differently. Who did?—

Paris? "Mr. Bradly Mr. Martin, Johnny Yenshe, Yves Martin."

Martin he calls himself but once in the London YMCA on Tottenham Court (never made out there)

— Once on Dean Street in Soho—No it wasn't Dean Street that was someone else looked like Bradly—It was on some back time street, silent pockets of Mexico City— (half orange with red pepper in the sun)—and the weakness hit me and I leaned against a wall and the white spot never washed out of my glen plaid coat— Carried that wall with me to a town in Ecuador can't remember the name, remember the towns all around but not that one where time slipped on the beach— sand winds across the blood—half a cup of water and Martin looked at the guide or was it the other, the Aussie, the Canadian, the South African who is sometimes there when the water is given out and always there when the water gives out—and gave him half his own water ration with gambler fingers could switch water if he wanted to—On the street once Cavesbury Close I think it was somebody called him Uncle Charles in English and he didn't want to know the man walked away dragging one leg—

Mr. Bradly Mr. Martin, slotless fade-out of distant fingers in the sick morning—I told him you on tracks— couldn't reach me with the knife—couldn't switch iron —and zero time to stop—couldn't make turnstile—bad shape from death Mr. Shannon no cept pay of distant fingers spilling old photo

—at me with the knife and fell over the white subway—on tracks I told—The shallow water came in with the tide of washed condoms and sick sharks fed on sewage—only food for this village—

swamp delta to the green sky that does not change—I —We—They—sit quietly where you made this dream— " Finnies nous attendons une bonne chance"—(Footnote: Last words in the diary of Yves Martin who presumably died of thirst in the Egyptian desert with three companions—Just who died is uncertain since one member of the party has not been found alive or dead and identity of the missing person is dubious—The bodies were decomposed when found, and identification was based on documents. But it seems the party was given to exchange of identifications, and even to writing in each others' diaries—Other members of the expedition were Mr. Shannon, Mr.

Armstrong, Monsieur Pillou, Ahmed Akid the guide—)

As the series is soon ending are these experiments really necessary?

Cross the Wounded Galaxies

The penny arcade peep show long process in different forms.

In the pass the muttering sickness leaped into our throats, coughing and spitting in the silver morning, frost on our bones. Most of the ape forms died there on the treeless slopes, dumb animal eyes on "me" brought the sickness from white time caves frozen in my throat to hatch in the warm steamlands spitting song of scarlet bursts in egg flesh, beyond the pass, limestone slopes down into a high green savanna and the grass-wind on our genitals, came to a swamp fed by hot springs and mountain ice. and fell in flesh heaps, sick apes spitting blood laugh, sound bubbling in throats torn with the talk sickness, faces and bodies covered with pus foam, animal hair thru the purple sex-flesh, sick sound twisted thru body, underwater music bubbling in blood beds, human faces tentative flicker in and out of focus. We waded into the warm mud-water, hair and ape flesh off in screaming strips, stood naked human bodies covered with phosphorescent green jelly, soft tentative flesh cut with ape wounds, peeling other genitals, fingers and tongues rubbing off the jelly-cover, body melting pleasure-sounds in the warm mud. till the sun went and a blue wind of silence touched human faces and hair. When we came out of the mud we had names.

In the pass muttering arctic flowers, gusts of frost wind, bones and most of the ape still felt, invisible slopes, spitting the bloodbends human bones out of focus, and ape-flesh naked human body. Caves frozen in my throat, green jelly genitals. Limestone slopes cover our bodies melting in savanna and grass mud. shit and sperm fed hot till the sun went. The mountain touched human bubbling throats. Torn we crawled out of the mud. faces and bodies covered the purple sex-flesh, and the sickness leaped into our body underwater music bubble in the silver morning frost, faces tentative flicker in ape forms, into the warm mud and water slopes, cold screaming sickness from white time, covered with phosphorescent shed in the warm lands, spitting ape wounds, feeling egg flesh, green pleasure-sounds warm our genitals, blue wind of silence. Apes spitting sound faces thru pus foam, the talking sickness had names. The sound stood naked in the grass, music bubbling in the blood, quivering frog eggs and sound thru our throats and swap we had names for each other, tentative flicker-laugh and laughing washed the hairs off. down to his genitals. Human our bodies melted into when we crawled out.

And the other did not want to touch me because of the white worm-thing inside but no one could refuse if I wanted and ate the fear-softness in other men. The cold was around us in our bones. And I could see the time before the thing when there was green around and the green taste in my mouth and the green plant-shit on my legs, before the cold. . . And some did not eat flesh and died because they could not live with the thing inside. . . Once we caught one of the hairy men with our vine nets and tied him over a slow fire and left him there until he died and the thing sucked his screams moving in my face like smoke and no one could eat the flesh-fear of the hairy man and there was a smell in the cave bent us over. . . We moved to keep out of our excrement where white worms twisted up feeling for us and the white worm-sickness in all our bodies. We took our pots and spears and moved South and left the black flesh there in the ashes. . . Came to the great dry plain and only those lived who learned to let the thing surface and eat animal excrement in the brown water holes. . . Then thick grass and trees and animals. I pulled the skin over my head and I made another man put on the skin and horns and we fucked like the animals stuck together and we found the animals stuck together and killed both so I knew the thing inside me would always find animals to feed my mouth meat. . . Saw animals chase us with spears and woke eating my own hand and the blood in my mouth made me spit up a bitter green juice. But the next day I ate flesh again and every night we put on animal skins and smeared green animal excrement down our legs and fucked each other with whimpering snorting noises and stuck together shadows on the cave walls, and ate surface men. . . the skin over my head and green taste and the horns and we fucked before the thing inside me would. We caught one of the hairy men animaled him over a slow fire eating my own hand, the thing sucked his screams green bitter juice. Those lived who learned to let the softness in, eat animal excrement in the brown bones. . . I made another man put on the skin green plant shit on animal stuck together flesh. So I knew with the thing inside always find animals to feed with our vine nets. Blood in my mouth made me spit up moving in my face like the next day I ate flesh again. . . Moved to knee legs and fucked each other twisted up feeling and stuck together shadows on our bodies.

Glass blizzards thru the rusty limestone streets exploded flesh from the laughing bones, spattering blood cross urine of walls. We lived in sewers of the city, crab parasites in our genitals rubbing our diseased flesh thru each other on a long string of rectal mucus, place of the tapeworms with white bone faces and disk mouths feeling for the soft host mucus, the years, the long, the many, such a place. In a land of grass without memory, only food of the hordes moving south, the dark armadillo flesh killed in the cool morning grass with throwing sticks. The women and their thing police ate the flesh and we fought over their shit-encrusted pieces of armadillo gristle.

Glass blizzards without memory, only food of flesh was the dank urine of the city, crab parasites ate the flesh, thru jungles of breath when we copulate with white bones faces, place of nettles and scorpions for the soft host mucus, intestines sprouting weed room in the cool morning walls, the women in our genitals and bowels, fought over their shit, rubbing our diseased flesh-meat a mucus string: clawing thru shit place of tapeworms in some disk mouth, larval bodies feeling the penalty, the years, the long, the many, such shoots growing.

Sitting naked at the bottom of a well, the cool mud of evening touched our rectums. We shared a piece of armadillo gristle, eating it out of each other's mouths, above us a dry husk of insect bodies along the stone well wall and thistles over the well mouth against green evening sky. licking the gristle from his laughing teeth and gums I said: "I am Allah. I made you." A blue mist filled the well and shut off our word-breath. My hands sank into his body. We fell asleep in other flesh.

Smells on our stomach and hands. Woke in noon sun, thistle shades cutting our soft night flesh.

Evening touched our rectums. mud shells and frogs croaking, licking the gristle asleep with other flesh, the cool mud of breath, and our bodies we shared. branches in the wind, his knees, other mouths, against the green evening sky. "We laughing teeth and gums," I said. Hands woke in the noon sun soft night flesh, smell on our stomach, thistle shades cutting, penny arcade peep show—

long process in different forms— dead fingers talk in braille.

Think Police keep all Board Room Reports—and we are not allowed to proffer the Disaster Accounts—Wind hand caught in the door—Explosive Bio-Advance Men out of space to employ Electrician in gasoline crack of history—Last of the gallant heroes—"I'm you on tracks, Mr. Bradly Mr. Martin"—Couldn't reach flesh in his switch—and zero time to the sick tracks—A long time between suns I held the stale overcoat—sliding between light and shadow—muttering in the dogs of unfamiliar score—cross the wounded galaxies we intersect, poison of dead sun in your brain slowly fading —Migrants of ape in gasoline crack of history, explosive bio-advance out of space to neon—"I'm you, Wind Hand caught in the door"—Coulnd't reach flesh—In sun I held the stale overcoat, Dead Hand stretching the throat —Last to proffer the disaster account on tracks. "See Mr.

Bradly Mr.—"

And being blind may not refuse to hear: "Mr. Bradly Mr. Martin, disaster to my blood whom I created"— (The shallow water came in with the tide and the Swedish River of Gothenburg.)

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