The Soft Machine Read online

  "I'm thin"—Crisscross of broken light from wood lathes over the patio, silver flak holes in his face

  —We worked the Hole together in our lush rolling youth— (Footnote: "working the Hole," robbing drunks on the subway)—And kicked a habit in East St. Louis—Made it four times third night, fingers scraping bone—At dawn shrinking from flesh and cloth—

  Hands empty of hunger on the stale breakfast table— winds of sickness through his face—pain of the long slot burning flesh film—canceled eyes, old photo fading —violet brown souvenir of Panama City—I flew to La Paz trailing the colorless death smell of his sickness with me still, thin air like death in my throat—sharp winds of black dust and the grey felt hat on every head—purple pink and orange disease faces cut prenatal flesh, genitals under the cracked bleeding feet— aching lungs in dust and pain wind—mountain lakes blue and cold as liquid air—Indians shitting along the mud walls—brown flesh, red blankets—

  "No, señor. Necesita receta."

  And the refugee German croaker you hit anywhere: "This you must take orally—You will inject it of course —Remember it is better to suffer a month if so you come out—With this habit you lose the life is it not?" And he gives me a long creepy human look—

  And Joselito moved into my room suffocating me with soccer scores—He wore my clothes and we laid the same novia who was thin and sickly always making magic with candles and Virgin pictures and drinking aromatic medicine from a red plastic eye cup and never touched my penis during the sex act.

  Through customs checks and control posts and over the mountains in a blue blast of safe conducts and three monkey creatures ran across the road in a warm wind— (sound of barking dogs and running water) swinging round curves over the misty void—down to end of the road towns on the edge of Yage country where shy Indian cops checked our papers—through broken stellae, pottery fragments, worked stones, condoms and shit-stained comics, slag heaps of phosphorescent metal excrement—faces eaten by the pink and purple insect disease of the New World—crab boys with human legs and genitals crawl out of clay cubicles—Terminal junkies hawk out crystal throat gristle in the cold mountain wind—Goof ball bums covered with shit sleep in rusty bathtubs—a delta of sewage to the sky under terminal stasis, speared a sick dolphin that surfaced in bubbles of coal gas

  —taste of metal left silver sores on our lips—only food for this village built on iron racks over an iridescent lagoon—swamp delta to the sky lit by orange gas flares.

  In the flash bulb of orgasm I saw three silver numbers —We walked into the streets and won a football pool —Panama clung to our bodies stranger color through his eyes the lookout different.

  Flash bulb monster crawling inexorably from Old Fred Flash—the orgasm in a 1920 movie, silver writing from backward countries—Flapping genitals in wind— explosion of the throat from peeled noon drifting sheets of male flesh to a stalemate of black lagoons while open shirts twist iridescent in the dawn—(this sharp smell of carrion.)

  "Take it from a broken stalemate—The Doctor couldn't reach and see?: Those pictures are the line

  — Fading breath on bed showed sound track—You win handful of dust that's what."

  Metamorphosis of the Rewrite Department coughing and spitting in fractured air—flapping genitals of carrion—Our drained countess passed on a hideous leather body—We are digested and become nothing here— dust air of gymnasiums in another country and besides old the pool now, a few inches on dead post cards— here at the same time there his eyes—Silver light popped stroke of nine.

  Dead post card you got it?—Take it from noon refuse like ash—Hurry up see?—Those pictures are yourself— Is backward sound track—That's what walks beside you to a stalemate of physical riders

  —("You come with me, Meester?")—I knew Mexican he carried in his flesh with sex acts shooting them pills I took—Total alertness she is your card—Look, simple: Place exploded man goal in other flesh—dual controls country—double sex sad as the Drenched Lands.

  Last man with such explosion of the throat crawling inexorably from something he carried in his flesh—Last turnstile was in another country and besides knife exploded Sammy the Butcher—

  Holes in 1920 movie— Newspaper tape fading, after dinner sleep ebbing carbon dioxide—

  Indications enough showed you calls to make, horrors crawling inexorably toward goal in other flesh —What are you waiting for, kid?—Slotless human wares?—Nothing here now—

  Metamorphosis is complete—Rings of Saturn in the dawn—The sky exploded question from vacant lots—youth nor age but as it were lips fading—There in our last film mountain street boy exploded

  "the word," sits quietly silence to answer.

  "You come with me, Meester to greet the garbage man and the dawn? Traced fossil countenance everlastingly about the back door, Meester." sick dawn of inane cooperation—dead post cards swept out by typewriters clatter hints as we shifted commissions—Hurry up please—Crawling inexorably toward its goal—I— We—They—sit quietly in last terrace of the garden— The neon sun sinks in this sharp smell of carrion— (circling albatross—peeled noon—refuse like ash)—

  Ghost of Panama clung to our throats coughing and spitting in the fractured air, falling through space between worlds, we twisted slowly to black lagoons, flower floats and gondolas—tentative crystal city iridescent in the dawn wind—(adolescents ejaculate over the tide flats)—Dead post card are you thinking of?— What thinking?—peeled noon and refuse like ash— Hurry up please—Make yourself a bit smart—Who is the third that walks beside you to a stalemate of black lagoons and violet light? Last man—Phosphorescent centipede feeding on flesh strung together we are digested and become nothing here.

  "You come with me, Meester?"

  Up a great tidal river to the port city stuck in water hyacinths and banana rafts—The city is an intricate split-bamboo structure in some places six stories high overhanging the street propped up by beams and sections of railroad track and concrete pillars, an arcade from the warm rain that falls at half hour intervals— The coast people drift in the warm steamy night eating colored ices under the arc lights and converse in slow catatonic gestures punctuated by immobile silence— Plaintive boy-cries drift through Night Of the Vagrant Ball Players.

  "Paco!—Joselito!—Enrique!—"

  " A ver Luckees! "

  "Where you go, Meester?"

  "Squeezed down heads?"

  Soiled mouth above a tuxedo blows smoke rings into the night, "SMOKE TRAK CIGARETTES.

  THEY LIKE YOU. TRAK LIKE ANY YOU. ANY TRAK LIKE YOU. SMOKE TRAKS. THEY

  SERVICE. TRAK TRAK TRAK."

  Los Vagos Jugadores de Pelota storm the stale streets of commerce—Civil Guards discreetly turn away and open their flys to look for crabs in a vacant lot—For the Vagrant Ball Players can sound a Hey Rube Switch brings a million adolescents shattering the customs barriers and frontiers of time, swinging out of the jungle with Tarzan cries, crash landing perilous tin planes and rockets, leaping from trucks and banana rafts, charge through the black dust of mountain wind like death in the throat.

  The trak sign stirs like a nocturnal beast and bursts into blue flame, "SMOKE TRAK

  CIGARETTES. THEY LIKE YOU. TRAK LIKE ANY YOU. ANY TRAK LIKE YOU. SMOKE

  TRAKS. THEY SATISFY. THEY SERVICE. TRAK TRAK TRAK."

  "Vagos Jugadores de Pelota, sola esperanza del mundo, take it to Cut City—Street gangs Uranian born in the face of nova conditions, cut word lines, cut time lines—Take it to Cut City, muchachos

  —'Minutes to go-

  Jungle invades the weed grown parks where armadillos infected with the Earth Eating Disease gambol through deserted kiosks and Bolivar in catatonic limestone liberates the area—Candiru infiltrate causeways and swimming pools—Albinos blink in the sun—rank smell of rotten rivers and mud flats—swamp delta to the sky that does not change—islands of garbage where Green Boys with delicate purple gills tend chemical gardens—terminal post card shrink
ing in heavy time.

  Muttering addicts of the orgasm drug, boneless in the sun, eaten alive by crab men—terminal post card shrinking in heavy time. "Thing Police keep all Board Room Reports—Do not forget this, Señor—"

  They were searching his room when he returned from the Ministry of Tourist Travel—Fingers light and cold as Spring wind rustling papers and documents—One flashed a badge like a fish side in dark water—

  "Police, Johnny."

  "Campers," obviously—"Campers" move into any government office and start issuing directives and spinning webs of inter-office memos—Some have connections in high sources that will make the operation legal and exempt narcotic—Others are shoestring operators out of broom closets and dark rooms of the Mugging Department—They charge out high on ammonia issuing insane orders and requisitioning any object in their path—Tenuous bureaus spring up like sandstorms—The whole rancid oil scandal drifted out in growth areas—

  Bradly was reading the sign nailed to a split-bamboo tenement—The sign was printed on white paper book page size:

  Cut The Sex and Dream Utility Lines//

  Cut the Trak Service Lines//

  The paws do not refresh//

  Clom Fliday Meester Surplus Oil//

  Working for the Yankee dollar?//

  Trak your own utilities//

  Under silent wings of malaria a tap on his shoulder: " Documentes, señor. Passaport."

  His passport drew them like sugar flashing gold teeth in Uttle snarls of incredulity: " Passaport no bueno. No en ordenes."

  The fuzz that could not penetrate to the passport began chanting in unison: " Comisaria! Comisaria!

  Comisaria! Meester a la Comisaria!—Passaport muy malo. No good. No bueno. Typical sights leak out." The Comandante wore a green uniform spattered with oil and gave out iron smoke as he moved—A small automatic moved round his waist on metal tracks trailing blue sparks—Seedy agents click into place with reports and documents.

  "It is permiso, si to read the public signs. This"—his hand covered the white sign on a split-bamboo wall— "is a special case."

  A man with a green eyeshade slid forward: "Yes. That's what they call it: 'making a case'—It's all there in the files, the whole rancid oil scandal of the Trak Sex And Dream Utilities in Growth Areas."

  He pointed to a row of filing cabinets and lockers— Smell of moldy jockstraps and chlorine drifted through the police terminal. The Comandante turned the newspaper man back with a thin brown hand: "Much politics that one—It is better to be just technical."

  A Swede con man hiding out in Rio Bamba under the cold souvenir of Chimborazi, junk cover removed for the nonpayment, syndicates of the world feeling for him with distant fingers of murder, perfected that art along the Tang Dynasty in the back room of a Chinese laundry. The Swede had one thing left: the grey felt hat concession for "growth areas" hidden under front companies and aliases. With a 1910 magic lantern he posed Indians in grey felt hats and broke the image into a million pieces reflected in dark eyes and blue mountain ice and black water and piss and lamp chimneys, tinted bureaucrat glasses, gun barrels, store fronts and cafe mirrors—He flickered the broken image into the eyes of a shrunken head that died in agony looking at a grey felt hat. And the Head radiated: HAT. .HAT. .HAT. .HAT. .HAT. .

  "It is a jumping head," he said.

  When the hat lines formed one thing that could break them was orgasm—So he captured a missionary's wife and flickered her with pornographic slides—And he took her head to radiate anti-sex—He took other anti-sex heads in coprophiliac vice and electric disgust—He dimed the Sex and Dream Utilities of the land. And he was shipped back to Sweden in a lead cylinder to found the Trak Service and the Trak Board.

  Trak has come a long way from a magic lantern in the Chink laundry. The Heads were donated to the Gothenburg Museum where the comparatively innocuous emanations precipitated a mass sex orgy.

  Vagos Jugadores, sola esperanza del mundo, take it to Cut City, the black obsidian pyramid of Trak Home Office.

  "The perfect product, gentlemen, has precise molecular affinity for its client of predilection.

  Someone urges the manufacture and sale of products that wear out? This is not the way of competitive elimination. Our product never leaves the customer. We sell the Servicing and all Trak products have precise need of Trak servicing. . . The servicing of a competitor would act like antibiotic, offering to our noble Trak-strain services inedible counterpart. . . This is not just another habit-forming drug this is the habit-forming drug takes over all functions from the addict including his completely unnecessary under the uh circumstances and cumbersome skeleton. Reducing him ultimately to the helpless condition of a larva. He may be said then to owe his very life such as it is to Trak servicing..."

  The Trak Reservation so-called includes almost all areas in and about the United Republics of Freelandt and, since the Trak Police process all matters occurring in Trak Reservation and no one knows what is and is not Reservation cases, civil and criminal are summarily removed from civilian courts with the single word TRAK to unknown sanctions. . . Report meetings of Trak personnel are synchronized with other events as to a low pressure area. . . Benway was reporting so-called actually included almost the report meetings of Trak persons. . . Sometimes the Reservation is other persons and events in Trak guards sub type...

  "Outskirts of Mexico City—Can't quite make it with all the guards around—Are you at all competent to teach me the language? Come in please with the images—"

  Smell death bed pictures—Cooperation inane—Carrion in the bank—Passport bad—Average on level tore canines—Understand fee: Corpses hang pants open in erogenous smells to Monterrey—

  Clear and loud ahead naked post cards and baby shoes—A man comes back to something he left in underwear peeled the boy warm in 1929—Thighs slapped the bed jumped ass up—"Johnny Screw"—Cup is split—wastings—Thermodynamics crawls home—game of empty hands—bed pictures post dead question—carrion smell sharp.

  "Meester, jelly thing win you—Waiting for this?" Streets of idiot pleasure—obsidian palaces of the fish city, bubbles twisting slow linen to the floor, traced fossils of orgasm.

  "You win something like jelly fish, Meester." His eyes calm and sad as little cats snapped the advantages: "And I told him I said I am giving notice— Hanged in your dirty movies for the last time—Three thousand years in show business and I never stand still for such a routine like this."

  Street boys of the green with cruel idiot smiles and translucent amber flesh, aromatic jasmine excrement, pubic hairs that cut needles of pleasure—serving insect pleasures of the spine—alternate terminal flesh when the egg cracks.

  "This bad place, Meester—This place of last fuck for Johnny."

  Smile of idiot death spasms—slow vegetable decay filmed his amber flesh—always there when the egg cracks and the white juice spurts from ruptured spines —From his mouth floated coal gas and violets—The boy dropped his rusty black pants—delicate must of soiled linen—clothes stiff with oil on the red tile floor— naked and sullen his street boy senses darted around the room for scraps of advantage—

  "You come with me Meester? Last flucky." Stranger color through his eyes the lookout different, face transparent with all the sewers of death—Hard-ons spread nutty smells through the outhouse—

  soiled linen under the ceiling fan—spectral lust of shuttered rooms —He left a shirt on my bed.

  "Jimmy Sheffields is still as good as he used to be."

  "He was servicing customers shit, Meester—So Doctor Benway snapped the advantages—This special breed spitting notice: Egg cracks the transmitter—Rat spines gathering mushroom flesh—

  The boy dropped around your room for scraps—Got the rag on body from vegetable—Dropped his pants and his cock."

  "Who are you—My boat—"

  "Smells through the outhouse—A compost heap, Meester."

  Sacred Sewers of Death—Boy dropped under the swamp cypress floppin
g around in soiled linen—

  (Started off on foot across the deserted fields—a little hut on the outskirts—The writer looked at both of us good as he used to be.) Idiot pictures started coming in—

  "You win something like jelly with his knees up to the chin—sad little irrigation ditch—Parrot on shoulder prods that heart—Paralyzed, twisting in your movies for the last time—Out of me from the waist down—I never stand still for such lookout on street boys of the green— Happened that boy could keep his gas and violets—This spot advantages brown hands working in concert for a switch to the Drenched Lands—Cyclotron shit these characters—Come level on average smell under any image—Evil odors high around the other—Jimmy Sheffields is again as good—Street boy's breath receiving notice—Jelly routine like this—When the egg cracks our spines servicing special customers of fossil orgasm."

  Kerosene lamp spattered light on red- and white-striped T-shirt and brown flesh—Dropped his pants— Pubic hairs cut stale underwear fan whiffs of young hard-on washing odors—afternoon wind where the awning flaps—

  "Get physical with a routine like this?—Show you something interesting: diseased flesh servicing frantic last fuck for Johnny—Film over the bed you know, eyes pop out—Naked candy around the room, scraps of adolescent image, hot semen in Panama—Then the boy drops his drag and retires to a locker— Who lookout different? Who are you when their eyes pop out— Mandrake smells through the outhouse—The boy dropped and the boy wakes up paralyzed—Remember there is only one visit: iron roof—soiled linen under the clothes—scar tissue—shuttered room—evil odors of food—I wasn't all that far from being good as I used to be—Obsidian that broker before they get to him—A crab scuttles out heavy—You win something like vacant lot—sad little patch right?—boy face, green scarf—movies three up—You understand until I die work I never stand still for. and such got the job—End getting to know street boys of the Green Passport vending last fuck as his pants drop."

  Dust of cities and wind faces came to World's End— call through remote dawn soaked in clouds, shivering back to mucus of the world.