Nathan Wikman

“In the pass the muttering sickness leaped into our throats, coughing and spitting in the silver
morning, frost on our bones. Most of the ape forms died there on the treeless slopes, dumb animal
eyes on "me" brought the sickness from white time caves frozen in my throat to hatch in the warm
steamlands spitting song of scarlet bursts in egg flesh, beyond the pass, limestone slopes down into
a high green savanna and the grass-wind on our genitals, came to a swamp fed by hot springs and
mountain ice. and fell in flesh heaps, sick apes spitting blood laugh, sound bubbling in throats torn
with the talk sickness, faces and bodies covered with pus foam, animal hair thru the purple sex-
flesh, sick sound twisted thru body, underwater music bubbling in blood beds, human faces
tentative flicker in and out of focus. We waded into the warm mud-water, hair and ape flesh off in
screaming strips, stood naked human bodies covered with phosphorescent green jelly, soft tentative
flesh cut with ape wounds, peeling other genitals, fingers and tongues rubbing off the jelly-cover,
body melting pleasure-sounds in the warm mud. till the sun went and a blue wind of silence touched
human faces and hair. When we came out of the mud we had names.
In the pass muttering arctic flowers, gusts of frost wind, bones and most of the ape still felt,
invisible slopes, spitting the bloodbends human bones out of focus, and ape-flesh naked human
body. Caves frozen in my throat, green jelly genitals. Limestone slopes cover our bodies melting in
savanna and grass mud. shit and sperm fed hot till the sun went. The mountain touched human
bubbling throats. Torn we crawled out of the mud. faces and bodies covered the purple sex-flesh,
and the sickness leaped into our body underwater music bubble in the silver morning frost, faces
tentative flicker in ape forms, into the warm mud and water slopes, cold screaming sickness from
white time, covered with phosphorescent shed in the warm lands, spitting ape wounds, feeling egg
flesh, green pleasure-sounds warm our genitals, blue wind of silence. Apes spitting sound faces thru
pus foam, the talking sickness had names. The sound stood naked in the grass, music bubbling in
the blood, quivering frog eggs and sound thru our throats and swap we had names for each other,
tentative flicker-laugh and laughing washed the hairs off. down to his genitals. Human our bodies
melted into when we crawled out.
And the other did not want to touch me because of the white worm-thing inside but no one could
refuse if I wanted and ate the fear-softness in other men. The cold was around us in our bones. And
I could see the time before the thing when there was green around and the green taste in my mouth
and the green plant-shit on my legs, before the cold. . . And some did not eat flesh and died because
they could not live with the thing inside. . . Once we caught one of the hairy men with our vine nets
and tied him over a slow fire and left him there until he died and the thing sucked his screams
moving in my face like smoke and no one could eat the flesh-fear of the hairy man and there was a
smell in the cave bent us over”
― William S. Burroughs, The Soft Machine