IISZ 2018 Challenge #6 - Burroughs Cut-Up

[RiverNotch]

An Ode to Aracknid,


The only native in the Interzone
who is not affectation or perversity,
but a useful pretext to break off relations with...

What's the commission?... The commission...
The Commission: anyone he doesn't want to see,
the only native in the Interzone.

A hum of Sex and Commerce shakes the Zone:
denounce each other in the embassy!
A useful pretext to break off relations with

six venereal diseases. On one occasion,
a bloody, dead baby in the street,
the only native in the Interzone,

retired from some unspecified position
flushed with success, with strangulated intestines,
with a useful pretext to break off all relations.

The police questioned Aracknid. "Blacking out in the Zone,
a violation of the Sanitary
Code. The only native in the Interzone?
What a useful pretext to break off all relations...

---

Sleepy


Affected by the beauty
of the sea and approaching storm,
for the first time, a full impression:
the wind whistling a new scene,
a new experience, enough to hold on.
Raindrops falling, the bright stars.
Now's a fine time, there's a great deal
to be done; strange as it may seem,
I lay down.

That reads like my impression of a translation of some mystical medieval poem from the Middle East. Absolutely stunning.