The Soft Machine Read online

  A blast of golden horns: The Druid Priest emerges from the Sacred Grove, rotting bodies hang about him like Spanish moss. His eyes blue and cold as liquid air expand and contract eating light.

  The Boy Sacrifice is chosen by erection acclaim. Universal Erection feeling for him until all pricks point to “Yes, Boy” feels the “Yes” run through him and melt his bones to “Yes” stripped naked in the Sacred Grove shivering and twitching under the Hanging Tree green disk mouths sucking his last bone meal. He goes to The Tree naked on flower floats through the obsidian streets red stone buildings and copper pagodas of The Fish City stopping in Turkish Baths and Sex Rooms to make blue movies with Youth. The entire city is in heat during this ceremony, faces swollen with tumescent purple penis flesh. Lightning fucks flash on any street corner leave a smell of burning metal blue sparks up and down the spine. A vast bath-town of red clay cubicles over twisting geological orgasm with the Green Crab Boys disk mouth’s slow rasping tongue on spine centers twisting in the warm black ooze.

  Noteworthy is The Glazing Ceremony when certain of the living urns are covered with terra cotta and baked in red brick ovens by the women who pull the soft red meat out with their penis forks and decorate house and garden with the empty urns. The Urnings for The Glazing Ceremony are chosen each day by locker number from the public urn and numbers read out over the soft speaker inside the head. Helpless Urns listening to the number call charge our soft terror-eating substance, our Rich Substance.

  Now it is possible to beat the number before call by Fixing The Urn or after call by The Retroactive Fix which few are competent to practice. There is also a Ceremonial Massage in which the penis flesh is rubbed in orgasm after orgasm until Death in Centipede occurs. Death in Centipede is the severest sentence of The Insect Court and of course all urnings are awaiting sentence for various male crimes. Pues, every year a few experienced urnings beat the house and make Crystal Grade. When the crystal cover reaches a certain thickness the urning is exempt from ceremonial roll call and becomes immortal with nothing to do but slowly accrete a thicker cover in The Crystal Hall of Fame.

  Few beat the house. A vast limestone bat. High mountain valley cut off by severest sentence of symbiotic cannibalism. So the game with one another.

  “I dunno me. Only work here. Technical Sergeant.”

  “Throw it into wind Jack.”

  A pimp leans in through the Country Club window. “Visit The House of David boys and watch the girls eat shit. Makes a man feel good all over. Just tell the madam a personal friend of mine.” He drops a cuneiform cylinder into the boy’s hip pocket feeling his ass with lost tongue of The Penis Urn People in a high mountain valley of symbiotic cannibalism. The Natives are blond and blue-eyed sex in occupation. It is unlawful to have orgasm alone and the inhabitants live in a hive of sex rooms and flickering blue movie cubicles. You can spot one on the cubicle skyline miles away. We all live in the blue image forever. The cubicles fade out in underground steam baths where lurk The Thurlings, malicious boys’ spirits fugitive from the blue movie who mislead into underground rivers. (The Traveler is eaten by aquatic centipedes and carnivorous underwater vines.)

  Orgasm death spurts over the flower floats—Limestone God a mile away—Descent into penis flesh cut off by a group of them came to this game under the Hanging Tree—Insect legs under red Arctic night—He wore my clothes and terror—

  The boy ejaculates blood over the flower floats. Slow vine rope drops him in a phallic fountain. Wire mesh cubicles against the soft inner ribs. Vast warehouse of penis and the shock threw him ten feet to smooth dirt and flak. God with erect penis spurting crystal young cruelty and foe solid. Dazzling terminal caress in silent corridors of Corn God. Erection feeling for descent in the morning sun feels the “Yes” from there by a mirror on you stripped naked. In The City a group of them came to this last bone meal under the Hanging Tree.

  “Pretty familiar.”

  The Priests came through the Limestone Gates playing green flutes: translucent lobster men with wild blue eyes and shells of flexible copper. A soundless vibration in the spine touched center of erection and the natives moved toward the flute notes on a stiffening blood tube for The Centipede Rites. A stone penis body straddles the opening to The Cave Room of steam baths and sex cubicles and The Green Cab boys who go all the way on any line.

  The Natives insert a grill of silver wires deep into the sinus where a crystal slowly forms. They strum the wires with insect hairs growing through flesh weaving cold cocaine sex frequencies.

  From The Living God Cock flows a stream of lubricant into a limestone trough green with algae. The Priests arrange the initiates into long dog-fuck lines molding them together with green jelly from The Lubricant Tanks. Now the centipede skin is strapped on each body a segment and The Centipede whips and cracks in electric spasms of pleasure throwing off segments kicking spasmodically uncontrolled diarrhea spurting orgasm after orgasm synchronized with the flicker lights. Carl is taken by the centipede legs and pulled into flesh jelly dissolving bones—Thick black hair sprouts through his tumescent flesh—He falls through a maze of penny arcades and dirty pictures, locker rooms, barracks, and prison flesh empty with the colorless smell of death—

  Cold metal excrement on all the walls and benches, silver sky raining the metal word fallout—Sex sweat like iron in the mouth. Scores are coming in. Pretend an interest.

  In a puppet booth The Manipulator takes pictures of bored insolent catatonics with eight-hour erections reading comics and chewing gum. The Impresario is a bony Nordic with green fuzz on his chest and legs. “I get mine later with the pictures. I can’t touch the performers. Wall of glass you know show you something interesting.”

  He pulls aside curtain: Schoolboy room with a banner and pin-ups. On the bed naked boy puppet reading comics and chewing gum with a hypo.

  Ghost your German. Spit penny arcades, tattoo booths, Nordic processions, human performers, trapeze artists. Whores of all sexes importune from scenic railways and ferris wheels where they rent cubicles, push up manhole covers in a puff of steam, pull at passing pant cuffs, careen out of The Tunnel Of Love waving condoms of jissom. Old blind queens with dirty peep shows built into their eye sockets disguise themselves as penny arcades and feel for a young boy’s throbbing cock with cold metal hands, sniff pensively at bicycle seats in Afghan Hound drag, Puerto Joselito is located through legs. Ghost slime sitting naked on tattoo booths, brown virus flesh of curse. Suffocating town, this. Ways to bury Explorer.

  Old junky street-cleaners push little red wagons sweeping up condoms and empty H caps, KY tubes, broken trusses and sex devices, kif garbage and confetti, moldy jockstraps and bloody Kotex, shit-stained color comics, dead kitten and afterbirths, Jenshe babies of Berdache and Junkie.

  Everywhere the soft insidious voice of The Pitchman delayed action language lesson muttering under all your pillows “Shows all kinds masturbation and self-abuse. Young boys need it special.”

  Last Hints

  Carl descended a spiral iron stairwell into a labyrinth of lockers, tier on tier of wire mesh and steel cubicles joined by catwalks and ladders and moving cable cars as far as he could see, tiers shifting interpenetrating swinging beams of construction, blue flare of torches on the intent young faces. Locker room smell of moldy jockstraps, chlorine and burning metal, escalators and moving floors start stop change course, synchronize with balconies and perilous platforms eaten with rust. Ferris wheels silently penetrate the structure, roller coasters catapult through to the clear sky—a young workman walks the steel beams with the sun in his hair out of sight in a maze of catwalks and platforms where coffee fires smoke in rusty barrels and the workers blow on their black cotton gloves in the clear cold morning through to the sky beams with sun in his hair the workers blow on their cold morning, dropped down into the clicking turnstiles. Buzzers, lights and stuttering torches smell of ozone. Breakage is constant. Whole tier
s shift and crash in a yellow cloud of rust, spill boys masturbating on careening toilets, iron urinals trailing a wake of indecent exposure, old men in rocking chairs screaming anti-fluoride slogans, a Southern Senator sticks his fat frog face out of the outhouse and brays with inflexible authority: “And Ah advocates the extreme penalty in the worst form there is for anyone convicted of trafficking in, transporting, selling or caught in using the narcotic substance known as nutmeg. . . I wanna say further that Ahm a true friend of the Nigra and understand all his simple wants. Why, I got a good Darkie in here now wiping my ass.”

  Wreckage and broken bodies litter the girders, slowly collected by old junkies pushing little red wagons patient and calm with gentle larcenous old woman fingers. Gathering blue torch flares light the calm intent young worker faces.

  Carl descended a spiral iron smell of ozone. Breakage is of lockers tier on tier crash in yellow cloud as far as he could see of indecent exposure on toilets. Swinging beams construct the intent young faces.

  Locker room toilet on five levels seen from the ferris wheel. Flash of white legs, shiny pubic hairs and lean brown arms, boys masturbating with soap under rusty showers form a serpent line beating on the lockers, vibrates through all the tiers and cubicles unguarded platforms and dead-end ladders dangling in space, workers straddling beams beat out runic tunes with shiny ball peen hammers. The universe shakes with metallic adolescent lust. The line disappears through a green door slide down to the Subterranean Baths twisting through torch flares the melodious boy-cries drift out of ventilators in all the locker rooms, barracks, schools and prisons of the world. “Joselito, Paco, Enrique.”

  Jacking off he is whiff stateroom that is always kept locked—And word dust dirtied his body falling through the space between worlds—

  The third kif pipe he went through the urinal sick and dizzy. He just down from the country. He just down from The Green Place by The Dog’s Mirror. Sometimes came to a place by the dogs. . . Jungle sounds and smells drift from his coat lapels. A lovely Sub that boy.

  Ghosts of Panama clung to our bodies—“You come with me, Meester?”—On the boy’s breath a flesh—His body slid from my hands in soap bubbles—We twisted slowly to the yellow sands, traced fossils of orgasm—

  “You win something like jelly fish, Meester.”

  Under a ceiling fan, naked and sullen, stranger color through his eyes the lookout different—Fading Panama photos swept out by an old junky coughing spitting in the sick dawn—

  (Phosphorescent metal excrement of the city—Brain eating birds patrol the iron streets.)

  Hospital smell of dawn powder—Dead rainbow post cards swept out by an old junky in backward countries.

  “I don’t know if you got my last hints as we shifted commissions, passing where the awning flaps from The Café de France—Hurry up—Perhaps Carl still has his magic lantern—Dark overtakes someone walking—I don’t know exactly where you made this dream—­Sending letter to a coffin is like posting it in last terrace of the garden—I would never have believed realms and frontiers of light exist—I’m so badly informed and totally green troops—B.B., hurry up please—”

  (Stopped suddenly to show me a hideous leather body)—“I’m almost without medicine.”

  It was still good bye then against the window outside 1920 movie, flesh tracks broken—Sitting at a long table where the doctor couldn’t reach and I said: “He has your voice and end of the line—Fading breath on bed showing symptoms of suffocation—I have tuned them out—How many plots have been forestalled before they could take shape in boy haunted by the iron claws?—Meanwhile a tape recorder cuts old newspapers.” Panama clung to our bodies naked under the ceiling fan—Excrement at the far end of forgotten streets—Hospital smell on the dawn wind—

  (Peeled his phosphorescent metal knees, brain broiled in carrion hunger.)

  On the sea wall under fading Panama photo casual ghost of adolescent T-shirt traced fossil-like jelly fish—

  “On the sea wall if you got my last hints over the tide flats—I don’t know exactly where—woke up in other flesh—shirt with Chinese characters—breeze from the Café de France—lantern burning insect wings—I’m almost without medicine—far away—storms—crackling sounds—Nothing here now but the circling albatross—Dead post card waiting a place forgotten—”

  On the sea wall met a boy under the circling ­albatross —Peeled his red and white T-shirt to brown flesh and grey under like ash and passed a joint back and forth as we dropped each other’s pants and he looked down face like Mayan limestone in the kerosene lamp sputter of burning insect wings over the tide flats—Woke up in other flesh the lookout different—Hospital smell of backward countries—

  Where The Awning Flaps

  “So we got our rocks off permutating through each other’s facilities on the Blue Route and after a little practice we could do it without the projector and perform any kinda awful sex act on any street corner behind The Blue Grass stirring the passing rectums and pubic hairs like dry leaves falling in the pissoir: “J’aime ces types vicieux qu’ici montrent la bite—”

  Drinking from his eyes The Idiot Green boys plaintive as wind leaves erect wooden phallus on the graves of dying Lemur Peoples.

  “Fluck flick take any place. Johnny you-me-neon-asshole-amigos-now.”

  “You only get a hard-on with my permission.”

  “Who you now Meester? Flick fluck take Johnny over. Me Screw Johnny up same asshole? You me make flick-fluck-one-piece?”

  Just hula hoop through each other to Idiot Mambo. Every citizen of the area has a Blue-Print like some are Electricals and some are Vegetable Walking Carbonics and so on, it’s very technical. Boy Jissom tracks through rectal mucus and Johnny.

  “One track out so: Panels of Shadow.”

  “Me finish Johnny night.”

  So we get our rectums in transparent facilities Blue Route Process together. Slow Night to examine me. Every dawn smell fingers the passing rectum. Finger on all cocks: “I-you-me in The Pissoir of Present Time.” “Idiot fuck you-me-Johnny.” “Flick fluck Idiot Asshole Buddies like a tree frog clinging in Permission. Who are you Green Hands? Fungoid Purple?”

  “Johnny over. Me screw. Flick fluck One Piece.”

  Warm spermy smell to idiot Mambo. Silence belches smell of ozone and Rectal Flight: “Here goes Examiner other rectums naked in Panama. Citizen of the area.”

  On the sea wall met the guide under The Circling Albatross. Peeled his red and white striped T-shirt to brown flesh and grey under like ash and we passed a joint back and forth as we dropped each other’s pants and he looked down face like Mayan Limestone in the kerosene lamp sputter of burning insect wings.

  “I screw Johnny up ass.” He jumped with his knees on the bed and slapped his thighs, cock-shadow pulsing on the blue paint wall. “Así como peeeeerrross.” Ass hairs spread over the tide flats. Woke up in other flesh, the lookout different, one boy naked in Panama dawn wind.

  Casual adolescent of urinals and evening flesh gone when I woke up—Age flakes fall through the pissoir—Ran into my old friend Jones—So badly off—Forgotten coughing in 1920 movie—­Vaudeville voices hustle on bed service—I nearly suffocated trying on the boy’s breath—That’s Panama—Brain-eating birds patrol the low frequency brain waves—Nitrous flesh swept out by your voice and end of receiving set—Sad hand tuned out the stale urine of Panama.

  “I am dying, Meester?—forgotten coughing in 1920 street?”

  Genital pawn ticket peeled his stale underwear, shirt flapping whiffs of young hard-on—Brief boy on screen laughing my skivvies all the way down—Whispers of dark street in Puerto Assis—Meester smiles through the village wastrel—Orgasm siphoned back telegram: “Johnny pants down.” (That stale summer dawn smell in the ­garage —vines twisting through steel—bare feet in dog’s excrement—)

  Panama clung to o
ur bodies from Las Palmas to David on camphor sweet smell of cooking paregoric—Burned down the republic—The druggist no glot clom Fliday—Panama mirrors of 1910 under seal in any drugstore—He threw in the towel morning light on cold coffee stale breakfast table—little cat smile—pain and death smell of his sickness in the room with me—three souvenir shots of Panama City—Old friend came and stayed all day face eaten by “I need more”—I have noticed this in the New World—

  “You come with me, Meester?”

  And Joselito moved in at Las Playas during the ­essentials —Stuck in this place—iridescent lagoons, swamp delta, bubbles of coal gas still be saying “A ver, Luckees!” a hundred years from now—A rotting teak-wood balcony propped up Ecuador.

  “Die Flowers and Jungle bouncing they can’t city?”

  On the sea wall two of them stood together waving—Age flakes coming down hard here—Hurry up—Another hollow ticket—Don’t know if you got my last hints trying to break out of this numb dizziness with Chinese characters—I was saying over and over “shifted commissions where the awning flaps” in your voice—end of the line—Silence out there beyond the gate—casual adolescent shirt flapping in the evening wind—

  “Old photographer trick wait for Johnny—Here goes Mexican cemetery.”

  On the sea wall met a boy with red and white striped T-shirt—(P.G. town in the purple twilight)—The boy peeled off his stale underwear scraping erection—warm rain on the iron roof—Under the ceiling fan stood naked on bed service—Bodies touched electric film—Contact sparks tingled—Fan whiffs of young hard-on washing adolescent ­T-shirt—The blood smells drowned voices and end of the line—That’s Panama—sad movie drifting in islands of rubbish, black lagoons and fish people waiting a place forgotten—fossil honky-tonk swept out by a ceiling fan—Old photographer trick tuned them out.