The Soft Machine. William S. Burroughs
lately. Remember that brown shit sorta yellow like snuff cooks up brown and clear. . .”
Junky in East Bath Room. . . Invisible and persistent dream body. . . Familiar face maybe. . . Scored for some time or body. . . in that grey smell of rectal mucus. . . Night cafeterias and junky room dawn smells. Three hours from Lexington made it five times. . . Soapy egg flesh. . .
“These double papers he claims of withdrawal.”
“Well I thought you was quitting. . .”
“I can’t make it.”
“Imposible quitar eso.”
Got up and fixed in the sick dawn flutes of Ramadan.
“William tu tomas más medicina?. . . No me hágas casa, William.”
Casbah house in the smell of dust and we made it; empty Eukodal boxes stacked four feet along the walls. . . dead on the surplus blankets. . . girl screaming. . . Vecinos rush in. . .
“What did she die of?”
“I don’t know she just died.”
Bill Gains in Mexico City room with his douche bag and his stash of codeine pills powdered in a bicarbonate can; “I’ll just say I suffer from indigestion.” Coffee and blood spilled all over the place. Cigarette holes in the pink blanket. . . The Consul would give me no information other than place of burial in The American Cemetery.
“Broke? Have you no pride? Go to your Consul.” He gave me an alarm clock ran for a year after his death.
Leif repatriated by the Danish. Freight boat out of Casa for Copenhagen sank off England with all hands. Remember my medium of distant fingers?—
“What did she die of?”
“End.”
“Some things I find myself.”
The Sailor went wrong in the end. Hanged to a cell door by his principals: “Some things I find myself doing I’ll pack in is all.”
Bread knife in the heart. . . rub and die. . . repatriated by a morphine script. . . those out of Casa for Copenhagen on special yellow note. . .
“All hands broke? Have you no pride?” Alarm clock ran for a year. “He just sit down on the curb and die.” Esperanza told me on Niño Perdido and we cashed a morphine script. Those Mexican Nar. scripts on special yellow bank-note paper. . . like a thousand dollar bill. . . or a Dishonorable Discharge from the US Army. . . And fixed in the cubicle room you reach by climbing this ladder.
Yesterday call flutes of Ramadan: “No me hágas casa.”
Blood spill over shirts and light. The American trailing in form. . . He went to Madrid. This frantic Cuban fruit finds Kiki with a Novia and stabs him with a kitchen knife in the heart. (Girl screaming. Enter the Nabors.)
“Quédase con su medicina, William.”
Half bottle of Fundador after half cure in The Jew Hospital. Shots of demerol by candlelight. They turned off the lights and water. Paper-like dust we made it. Empty walls. Look anywhere. No good. No bueno.
He went to Madrid. . . Alarm clock ran for yesterday. . . “No me hágas casa.” Dead on arrival. . . You might say at the Jew Hospital. . . Blood spilled over the American. . . Trailing lights and water. . . The Sailor went so wrong somewhere in that grey flesh. . . He just sit down on zero. . . I nodded on Niño Perdido his coffee over three hours late. . . They all went away and sent papers. . . The Dead Man write for you like a major. . . Enter Vecinos. . . Freight Boat smell of rectal mucus went down off England with all dawn smell of distant fingers. . . About this time I went to your Consul. . . He gave me a Mexican after his death. . . Five times of dust we made it. . . With soap bubbles of withdrawal crossed by a thousand junky nights. . . Soon after the half maps came in by candlelight. . . OCCUPY. . . Junk lines falling. . . Stay off. . . Bill Gains in the Yellow Sickness. . . Looking at dirty pictures casual as a ceiling fan short-timing the dawn we made it in the corn smell of rectal mucus and carbolic soap. . . Familiar face maybe from the vacant lot. . . Trailing tubes and wires. . . “You fucking-can’t-wait-hungry-junkies!. . .” Burial in the American Cemetery. “Quédase con su medicina. . .” On Niño Perdido the girl screaming. . . They all went way through Casbah House. . . “Couldn’t you write me any better than that? Gone away. . . You can look any place.”
No good. No Bueno.
Who Am I To Be Critical?
You wouldn’t believe how hot things were when I left the States—I knew this one pusher wouldn’t carry any shit on his person just shoot it in the line—Ten twenty grains over and above his own absorption according to the route he was servicing and piss it out in bottles for his customers so if the heat came up on them they cop out as degenerates—So Doc Benway assessed the situation and came up with this brain child—
“Once in the Upper Baboonasshole I was stung by a scorpion—The sensation is not dissimilar to a fix —Hummm.”
So he imports this special breed of scorpions and feeds them on metal meal and the scorpions turned a phosphorescent blue color and sort of hummed. “Now we must find a worthy vessel,” he said—So we flush out this old goof ball artist and put the scorpion to him and he turned sort of blue and you could see he was fixed right to metal—These scorpions could travel on a radar beam and service the clients after Doc copped for the bread—It was a good thing while it lasted and the heat couldn’t touch us—However all these scorpion junkies began to glow in the dark and if they didn’t score on the hour metamorphosed into scorpions straight away—So there was a spot of bother and we had to move on disguised as young junkies on the way to Lexington—Bill and Johnny we sorted out the names but they keep changing like one day I would wake up as Bill the next day as Johnny—So there we are in the train compartment shivering junk sick our eyes watering and burning and all of a sudden the sex chucks hit me in the crotch and I sagged against the wall and looked at Johnny too weak to say anything, it wasn’t necessary, he was there too and without a word he dipped some soap in warm water and dropped my shorts and rubbed the soap on my ass and worked his cock up me with a corkscrew motion and we both came right away standing there and swaying with the train clickety clack clack spurt spurt into the brass cuspidor—
We never got to Lexington actually—Stopped off in the town of Marshal and hit this old country croaker for tincture with the aged mother suffering from piles in the worst form there is line and he wrote like a major—That night we got into a pool game and Doc won a Duesenberg Panama hat tan suit and dark glasses like 1920 sports and the further South we went the easier it was to score like we brought the twenties along with us—Well we come to this Mexican border town in time to see something interesting—In order to make way for a new bridge that never got built actually they had torn down a block of shacks along the river where the Chink railway workers used to smoke the black stuff and the rats had been down under the shacks hooked for generations—So the rats was running all through the street squealing sick biting everyone in sight—
When we went to look for our car couldn’t find it and no cars anywhere just this train left over from an old Western—The track gave out somewhere north of Monterrey and we bought some horses off a Chinaman for a tin of mud—By this time there were soldiers everywhere shooting the civilians so we scored for some Civil War uniforms and joined one of the warring powers—And captured five soldiers who were wearing uniforms of a different color and the General got drunk and decided to hang the prisoners just for jolly and we rigged up a cart with a drop under a tree limb—The first one dropped straight and clean and one of the soldiers wiped his mouth and stepped forward grinning and pulled his pants down to an ankle and his cock flipped out spurting—We all stood there watching and feeling it right down to our toes and the others who were waiting to be hanged felt it too—So we stripped them and they got hard-ons waiting—They couldn’t help it you understand. That night we requisitioned a ranch house and all got drunk and Johnny did this dance with his tie around his neck lolling his head on one side and letting his tongue fall out and wriggled his ass and dropped his pants and his cock