I was poking around in an old project, The Book of Haiku Revelation, and I discovered two poetic assemblages made from Burroughs’ The Soft Machine. Burroughs, along with Duchamp and Gertrude Stein, among others, is an overarching artistic presence in the Death Palette series, so, methinks, why not give his haiku assemblages a whirl through BTR.

First, the haiku that worked so well in retranslation the sibyl has clearly set up shop on the corner of 103rd and Broadway:

repatriated 
by grey strata of subways— 
terminal postcard 

rotting in ozone 
chrysalis—sun stuttering 
in all-night purple 

cafeterias— 
smell of cobra jazz covered 
in iron heart of 

goof ball sleep—rasp of 
green slimy iridescent 
shit rubbing on flesh 

somewhere in the cold 
mouth of heavy knife time—boy 
torch moving, rusty 

lamp, tongue terms—round disk 
of morphine, script gristle in 
rooming house bathtub— 

shrinking bread over 
lagoon of old saliva— 
village of built racks 

The conceit will be (William Randolph) HEARST, one of Burroughs’ major bugaboos in what might be called his Control Theory of Biopolitics. The somewhat randomly chosen languages are Hindi, Estonian, Afrikaans, Russian, Sicilian, and Tok Pisin. No, I never heard of Tok Pisin before either, nor do I recall previously seeing it in Bing Translate. Is BT getting more sophisticated? We can only pray it’s as retrograde as ever. Nor is Tok Pisin some digital pidgin dialect used by a TikTok flock. It is, according to Wikipedia, “an English creole language spoken throughout Papua New Guinea. It is an official language of Papua New Guinea and the most widely used language in the country.” There’s no evidence, according to Chat, that WSB ever visited or wrote about PNG, but its rich anthropological legacy is right up his alley, so to speak. So to the poem, which loses its haiku structure in translation, of course, and has been volitionally lineated, but with all the Dickensonian dashliness that BTR inserted, preserved. 

A little resting place of the community before 
and a division in the room that breaks the ozone — 
the sun calls out all night in the purple cafe — 
the root of jazz in the center of the eye,  
sleep is easy and spreading — green, dirty, damaged like a book, 
crossing places inside the body in the cold and pockets of the mouth  
a child laughs with light, wild light, local language begins — 
this collection of cold places on the bench in Grisel’s house — 
big comrades of battle with small brother — the town had worked on the slaves 

When BTR spits out a name that wasn’t in the original text, you know things are cookin’. And when it’s a name of such ringing significance, we gotta be in the presence of the Phrygian Sibyl, not to be confused with the Augean Stables, though this is on the same level of serious shit. According to a site called Name Discoveries, Grisel “is derived from the Old Norse name Griselda. It is a feminine name that means ‘gray battle’ or ‘gray warrior.’ The name carries connotations of strength, resilience, and determination, reflecting a person who is capable of facing challenges with grace and courage.” Pure essence of the Death Palette series (“big comrades of battle,” indeed), whose first color-coded book is Grisaille. Moreover, there’s a piquant suggestion of WSB’s Break Through in Grey Room (“the room that breaks the ozone”) as well as The Wild Boys (“a child laughs with light, wild light”), and wait, there’s more:

the sun calls out all night in the purple cafe — 
the root of jazz in the center of the eye,  

This is so Sun Ra you don’t have to travel the spaceways to see it, and Sun is the ultimate “Here to Go” avant-jazzer. (“Cobra jazz” in the assemblage, it should be noted, speaks trippingly of John Zorn, who has five albums devoted to WSB themes.)

We might add that “working on the slaves” is pure Control, and “small brother” contrasts with Orwell’s Big Brother, or as Gem notes, “The ‘Big Brother’ (the State) needs ‘Small Brothers’ (the citizens) to act as local agents of the virus.” But . . .

. . . unfortunately the other Soft Machine assemblage, run through the very same HEARST routine, didn’t light the diviner’s fire with quite the same flame. First, the assemblage:

obsidian pink 
of the fish city—spectral 
palaces of cold 

blue fluid heavy 
as word dust stacked like lust in 
shuttered silence—we 

came out of the mud 
in blue image forever 
trailing patterns of 

demagnetized glooms 
from carnival rooms splintered 
in rotting orgasm— 

we all live in the 
fish city—dead postcard of 
a place forgotten— 

muttering burlap 
music, addicts waiting in 
the vines—blue addicts 

in the attic of 
crystal birdcalls—the city 
from when we had names 

And now the BTR output, which was oddly amenable to being fashioned into an almost perfect 5-7-5 haiku sequence.

A town stands tall like 
obsidian with red lights —  
like castles that are cold 
 
and bright, like water 
that has powder, like the desire 
for money that is 
 
on the side of tightness —  
we arrive on soil and lift 
a design of rooms 

that die at all times 
in a blueprint that is broken 
into great joy —  

everyone is in 
the town of peace — paper 
that is lost in the 

place dies — music is 
fresh in the wind, things are 
waiting in the grass —  

the invitation 
of crystal blue appears — town 
when our names are in this place 

Is this about the Beat Hotel in Paris? NYC and the Columbia hub, the town where the Beat Triumvirate first met? The invitation of crystal blue appears but has yet to be decoded. We’re muttering burlap music in the attic of Zornian birdcalls.