Lyrics The Unworthy Vessel - William S. Burroughs

The Unworthy Vessel

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