The Unworthy Vessel - William S. Burroughs

This piece is called The Unworthy Vessel

Daddy Long Legs looked like Uncle Sam on stilts and he ran this osteopath

clinic outside East St. Louis and took in a few junkie patients

For two nights a week they stay out at night in green long chairs and look at

the oaks and grass stretching down to a little lake in the sun.

The nurse moves

around the lawn with her silver tray, feeding the junkie.

And we called her

'Mother'.

Wouldn’t you?

Doc Benway and me was holed up there after a rumble in Dallas involving this

aphrodisiac ointment.

Doc goofed on ether, mixed in too much Spanish Fly,

and burned the prick off the police commissioner…

We come to Daddy Long Legs to cool off and we find him cool and casual,

in a dark room with potted rubber plants.

And a silver tray on a table where

he likes to see a week in advance

The nurse shows us to a room with rose wallpaper and he have this bell.

Any hour of day or night, just ring and Mother charges in with a loaded hypo

One day we are sitting out in the lawn chairs with lap robes.

And Doc picks up

a piece of grass he said «This junk turns you on.

Vegetable is green see?

Now green fix should last a looong time»

So we check out of the clinic and ran a house and Doc starts cookin' up this

green junk.

The basement is full of tanks smell like a compost heap of junkies.

So finally he draws off this heavy green fluid and loads it into a hypo big as

a bicycle pump

«Now we must find a worthy vessel' he says.

And we flush out this old goofball

artist and tell him it is pure Chinese H from the Ling Dynasty.

Doc shoots the

whole pint of green right into the mainline

Yellowjacket turns fibrous grey — green withers up like an old turnip!

And I say «I'm getting outta here, me.»

And Doc says: «An unworthy vessel obviously,.

It was strong in case»

Thank you