The Soft Machine Read online

  I Sekuin

  THE MAYAN CAPER—THE CENTIPEDE SWITCH—THE HEAVY METAL GIMMICK.

  I Sekuin, Perfected These Arts Along The Streets Of Minraud. Under Sign Of The Centipede. A Captive Head. In Minraud Time. In The Tattoo Booths. The Flesh Graft Parlors. Living Wax Work Of Minraud. Saw Thee Dummies Made to Impression. While You Wait. From Short-Time. In The Terminals Of Minraud. Saw The White Bug Juice Spurt From Ruptured Spines. In The Sex Rooms Of Minraud. While You Wait. In Minraud Time. The Sex Devices Of Flesh. The Centipede Penis. Insect Hairs Thru Grey-Purple Flesh. Of The Scorpion People. The Severed Heads. In Tanks Of Sewage. Eating Green Shit. In The Aquariums Of Minraud. The Booths Of Minraud. Under Sing Of The Centipede. The Sex Rooms And Flesh Films Of Minraud. I Sekuin A Captive Head. Learned The Drugs Of Minraud. In Flak Braille. Rot Brain And Spine. Leave A Crab Body Broken On The Brass And Copper Street. I Sekuin Captive Head. Carried Thru The Booths Of Minraud. By Arms. Legs.

  Extensions. From The Flesh Works Of Minraud. My Head In A Crystal Sphere Of Heavy Fluid. Under Sing Sign Of The Scorpion Goddess. Captive In Minraud. In The Time Booths Of Minraud. In The Tattoo Parlors of Minraud. In The Flesh Works Of Minraud. In The Sex Rooms Of Minraud. In The Flesh Films Of Minraud. March My Captive Head. HER Captive In Minraud Time Streets.

  On a level plain in the dry sound of insect wings ­Bradly crash landed a yellow Cub—Area of painted booths and vacant lots—In a dusty shop window of trusses and plaster feet, a severed head on sand, red ants crawling through nose and lips—

  “You crazy or something walk around alone?”

  The guide pointed to the head: “Guard—You walk through his eyes and you N.G.” The guide sliced a hand across his genitals: “This bad place, Meester—You ven conmigo—”

  He led the way through dusty streets—Metal excrement glowed in corners—Darkness fell in heavy chunks blocking out sections of the city.

  “Here,” said the guide—A restaurant cut from limestone, green light seeping through bottles and tanks where crustaceans moved in slow gyrations—The waiter took their order hissing cold dank breath through a disk mouth.

  “Good place—cave crabs—Muy bueno for fuck, Johnny—”

  The waiter set down a flat limestone shell of squid bodies with crab claws.

  “Krishnus,” said the guide.

  Still alive, moving faintly in phosphorescent slime—The guide speared one on a bamboo spike and dipped it into yellow sauce—A sweet metal taste burned through stomach intestines and genitals—Bradly ate the krishnus in ravenous gulps—

  The guide raised his arm from the elbow, “Muy bueno, Johnny—You see.” The waiter was singing through his disk mouth a bubbling cave song—“Vámanos, Johnny—I show you good place—We smoke fuck sleep O.K. Muy got good one, Johnny—”

  Word “Hotel” exploded in genitals—An old junky took Bradly’s money and led them to a blue cubicle—Bradly leaned out a square hole in one wall and saw that the cubicle projected over a void on rusty iron props—The floor moved slightly and creaked under their feet—

  “Some time this trap fall—Last fuck for Johnny.”

  There was a pallet on the iron floor, a brass tray with hashish pipes, and a stone jar.

  “Johnny shirt off”—said the guide unbuttoning ­Bradly’s shirt with gentle lush rolling fingers—“Johnny pants down”—He dipped a green phosphorescent unguent from the jar and smeared it over Bradly’s body—

  “Smear it on—Smear it in—Johnny me—I Johnny.”

  He passed the jar to Bradly—“Now you do say like me.”

  “Smear it on—Smear it in—Akid me—I Ahkid—”

  A long burn took stomach and intestines—Bodies rolled on the pallet leaving trails of flesh—­phosphorescent slime sleep—

  Woke in stale trade flesh swept out by an old junky coughing and spitting in the sick morning—

  Pretend An Interest

  Benway “camped” in the Board of Health. He rushed in anywhere brazenly impounding all junk. He was of course well-known but by adroit face rotation managed to piece out the odds, juggling five or six bureaus in the air thin and tenuous drifting-away cobwebs in a cold Spring wind under dead crab eyes of a Doorman in green uniform carrying an ambiguous object composite of club, broom and toilet plunger, trailing a smell of ammonia and scrubwoman flesh. An undersea animal surfaced in his face, round disk mouth of cold grey gristle, purple rasp tongue moving in green saliva: “Soul Cracker,” Benway decided. Species of carnivorous mollusk. ­Exists on Venus. It might not have bones. Time-switched the tracks through a field of Little White Flowers by the ruined signal tower. Sat down under a tree worn smooth by others sat there before. We remember the days as long procession of The Secret Police always everywhere in different form. In Guayaquil sat on the river bank and saw a big lizard cross the mud flats dotted with melon rind from passing canoes.

  Carl’s dugout turned slowly in the brown iridescent lagoon infested with sting ray, fresh water shark, arequipa, candirus, water boa, crocodile, electric eel, aquatic panther and other noxious creatures dreamed up by the lying explorers who infest bars marginal to the area.

  “This inaccessible tribe, you dig, lives on phosphorescent metal paste they mine from the area. Transmute to gold straightaway and shit it out in nuggets. It’s the great work.”

  Liver-sick gold eyes gold maps gold teeth over the aguardiente cooked on the Primus stove with canella and tea to cut the oil taste leaves silver sores in the mouth and throat.

  “That was the year of The Rinderpest when all the tourists died even the Scandinavians and we boys reduced to hawk the farter LWR—Local Wage Rate.”

  “No calcium in the area you understand. One blighter lost his entire skeleton and we had to carry him about in a canvas bathtub. A jaguar lapped him up in the end, largely for the salt I think.”

  Tin boys reduced to hawk the farter the substance and the strata—You know what that means?—Carried the youth to dead water infested with consent—That was the year of The Clear—Local Wage Rate of Program Empty Body—

  “Head Waters of The Baboon-asshole. . . That’s Hanging Vine country—” (The Hanging Vine flicked around the youth’s neck molding to his skull bones in a spiraling tendril motion snapped his neck, he hangs now ejaculating as Disk Mouths lined with green hairs fasten to his rectum growing tendrils through his body dissolving his bones in liquid gurgles and plops into the green eating jelly.)

  “This bad place you write, Meester. You win something like jelly fish.”

  They live in translucent jelly and converse in light flashes liquefying bones of the world and eating the jelly—Boy chrysalis rotting in the sun—Lazy undersea eyes on the nod over the rotting meat vegetable sleep—limestone dope out of shale and water. . .

  The youth is hanged fresh and bloody—Tall ceremony involves a scorpion head—Lethal mating operation from The Purified Ones—No calcium in the area—Exists on Venus—It might not have bones—Ray moss of orgasm and death—Limestone God a mile away—Better than shouts: “Empty body!”—Dead land here you understand waiting for some one marginal to the area.

  “Deep in Fucking Drum Country” (The naked Initiate is strapped with his back and buttocks fitted to a wooden drum. The Drummer beats out orgasm message until the Initiate’s flesh lights up with blue flame inside and the drum takes life and fucks the boy (puffs of smoke across a clear blue sky. . .) The Initiate awoke in other flesh the lookout different. . . And he plopped into squares and patios on “Write me Meester.”)

  Puerto Joselito is located at the confluence of two strong brown rivers. The town is built over a vast mud flat crisscrossed by stagnant canals, the buildings on stilts joined by a maze of bridges and catwalks extend up from the mud flats into higher ground surrounded by tree columns and trailing lianas, the whole area presenting the sordid and dilapidated air of a declining frontier post or an aban
doned carnival.

  “The town of Puerto Joselito, dreary enough in its physical aspect, exudes a suffocating fog of smoldering rancid evil as if the town and inhabitants were slowly sinking in wastes and garbage. I found these people deep in the vilest superstitions and practices.

  “Various forms of ritual execution are practiced here. These gooks have an aphrodisiac so powerful as to cause death in a total blood spasm leaving the empty body cold and white as marble. This substance is secreted by the Species Xiucutl Crustanus, a flying scorpion, during its lethal mating season in the course of which all male Xiucutl die maddened by the substance and will fly on any male creature infecting with its deadly sperm. In one ceremony the condemned are painted as gold, silver, copper and marble statues, then inoculated with Xiucutl sperm their convulsions are channeled by invisible control wires into exquisite ballets and freeze into garden fountains and park pedestals. And this is one of many ceremonies revolving on The Ceremonial Calendar kept by The Purified Ones and The Earth Mother.

  “The Purified One selects a youth each month and he is walled into a crystal cubicle molded on cervical vertebrae. On the walls of the cubicle, sex programs are cut in cuneiforms and the walls revolve on silent hydraulic pressures. At the end of the month the youth is carried through the streets on a flower float and ceremonially hanged in The Limestone Ball Court, it being thought that all human dross passes from The Purified One to die in The Youth at the moment of orgasm and death. Before the Youth is hanged he must give his public consent, and if he cannot be brought to consent he hangs The Purified One and takes over his functions. The Purified Ones are officially immortal with monthly injections of youth substance.” Quote Green-Baum Early Explorer.

  Carl’s outboard vibrated in a haze of rusty oil, bit a jagged piece out of the dugout canoe and sank, in iridescent brown water. Somewhere in the distance the muffled jelly sound of underwater dynamite: (“The Natives are fishing”). Howler monkeys like wind through leaves. The dugout twisted slowly and stopped, touching a ruined jetty. Carl got out with his Nordic rucksack and walked to the square on high ground. He felt a touch on his shoulder light as wind. A man in moldy grey police tunic and red flannel underwear one bare foot swollen and fibrous like old wood covered with white fungus, his eyes mahogany color flickered as The Watcher moved in and out. He gasped out the word “Control” and slipped to the ground. A man in grey hospital pajamas eating handfuls of dirt and trailing green spit crawled over to Carl and pulled at his pants cuff. Another moves forward on brittle legs breaking little puffs of bone meal. His eyes lit up a stern glare went out in smell of burning metal. From all sides they came pawing hissing spitting: “Papeles,” “Documentes,” “Passaport.”

  “What is all this scandal?” The Comandante in clean khaki was standing on a platform overlooking the square. Above him was an elaborate multileveled building of bamboo. His shirt was open on a brown chest smooth as old ivory. A little pistol in red leather cover crawled slowly across his skin leaving an iridescent trail of slime.

  “You must forgive my staff if they do not quite measure up to your German ideal of spit and polish. . . Backward. . . Uninstructed. . . Each living all alone and cultivating his little virus patch. . . They have absolutely nothing to do and the solitude. . .” He tapped his forehead. His face melted and changed under the flickering arc lights.

  “But there must be thirty of them about,” said Carl.

  The Comandante gave him a sharp look. “They are synchronized of course. They can not see or even infer each other so all think he is only police officer on post. Their lines you sabe never cross and some of them are already. . .”

  “And some of them are already dead. This is awkward since they are not legally responsible. We try to bury them on time even if they retain intact protest reflex. Like Gonzalez The Earth Eater. We bury him three times.” The Comandante held up three fingers sprouting long white tendrils. “Always he eat way out. And now if you will excuse me the soccer scores are coming in from The Capital. One must pretend an interest.”

  The Comandante had aged from remote crossroads of Time crawled into a metal locker and shut the door whimpering with fears, emerged in a moldy green jockstrap his body painted I-Red, U-Green. The Assistant flared out of a broom closet high on ammonia with a green goatee and marble face. He removed Carl’s clothes in a series of locks and throws. Carl could feel his body move to the muscle orders. The Assistant put a pail over his head and screamed away into distant hammers.

  The Comandante spread jelly over Carl’s naked paralyzed body. The Comandante was molding a woman. Carl could feel his body draining into the woman mold. His genitals dissolving, tits swelling as the Comandante penetrated applying a few touches to face and hair—(­Jissom across the mud wall in the dawn sound of barking dogs and running water)—Down there The Comandante going through his incantations around Carl’s empty body. The body rose presenting an erection, masturbates in front of the Comandante. Penis flesh spreads through his body bursting in orgasm explosions granite cocks ejaculate lava under a black cloud boiling with Monster Crustaceans. Cold grey undersea eyes and hands touched Carl’s body. The Comandante flipped him over with sucker hands and fastened his disk mouth to Carl’s asshole. He was lying in a hammock of green hair, penis-flesh hammers bursting his body. Hairs licked his rectum, spiraling tendrils scraping pleasure centers, Carl’s body emptied in orgasm after orgasm, bones lit up green through flesh dissolved into the disk mouth with a fluid plop. He quivers red now in boneless spasms, pink waves through his body at touch of the green hairs.

  The Comandante stripped Carl’s body and smeared on green jelly nipples that pulled the flesh up and in. Carl’s genitals wither to dry shit he sweeps clear with a little whisk broom to white flesh and black shiny pubic hairs. The Comandante parts the hairs and makes Incision with a little curved knife. Now he is modeling a face from the picture of his novia in The Capital.

  “And now, how you say, ‘the sound effects.’” He puts on a record of her voice, Carl’s lips follow and the female substance breathed in the words.

  “Oh love of my alma! Oh wind of morning!”

  “Most distasteful thing I ever stand still for.” Carl made words in the air without a throat, without a tongue. “I hope there is a farmacia in the area.”

  The Comandante looked at him with annoyance: “You could wait in the office please.”

  He came out putting on his tunic and strapping on a Luger.

  “A Drug Store? Yes I creo. . . Across the lagoon. . . I will call The Guide.”

  Carl walked through a carnival city along canals where giant pink salamanders and goldfish stirred slowly, penny arcades, tattoo booths, massage parlors, side shows, blue movies, processions, floats, performers, pitchmen to the sky.

  Puerto Joselito is located Dead Water. Inactive oil wells and mine shafts, strata of abandoned machinery and gutted boats, garbage of stranded operations and expeditions that died at this point of dead land where sting rays bask in brown water and grey crabs walk the mud flats on brittle stilt legs. The town crops up from the mud flats to the silent temple of High Jungle streams of clear water cut deep clefts in yellow clay and falling orchids endanger The Traveler.

  In a green savanna stand two vast penis figures in black stone, legs and arms vestigial, slow blue smoke rings pulsing from the stone heads. A limestone road winds through the pillars and into The City. A rack of rusty iron and concrete set in vacant lots and rubble, dotted with chemical gardens. A smell of junky hat and death about the town deadens and weight these sentences with “disgust you to see it.” Carl walked through footpaths of a vast shanty town. A dry wind blows hot and cold down from Chimborazo a soiled post card in the prop blue sky. Crab men peer out of abandoned quarries and shag heaps some sort of vestigial eye growing cheek bone and a look about them as if they could take root and grow on anybody. Muttering addicts of the orgasm drug, boneless in the sun, gur
gling throat gristle, heart pulsing slowly in transparent flesh eaten alive by the crab men.

  Carl walked through the penis posts into a town of limestone huts. A ring of priests sat around the posts legs spread, erections pulsing to flicker light from their eyes. As he walked through the electric eyes his lips swelled and his lungs rubbed against the soft inner ribs. He walked over and touched one of the priests and a shock threw him across the road into a sewage ditch. Maize fields surround the town with stone figures of The Young Corn God erect penis spurting maize shoots looks down with young cruelty and innocent lips parted slightly terminal caress in the dropping eyes. The Young Corn God is led out and his robes of corn silk stripped from his body by Lobster priests. A vine rope is attached to the stone penis of the Maize God. The boy’s cock rises iridescent in the morning sun and you can see the other room from there by a mirror on the wardrobe. . . Well now, in The City a group of them came to this valley grow corn do a bit of hunting fishing in the river.

  Carl walked a long row of living penis urns made from men whose penis has absorbed the body with vestigial arms and legs breathing through purple fungoid gills and dropping a slow metal excrement like melted solder forms a solid plaque under the urns stand about three feet high on rusty iron shelves wire mesh cubicles joined by catwalks and ladders a vast warehouse of living penis urns slowly transmuting to smooth red terra cotta. Others secrete from the head crystal pearls of lubricant that forms a shell of solid crystal over the red penis flesh.