On Burroughs’ Work

The method must be purest meat

    and no symbolic dressing,

actual visions & actual prisons

    as seen then and now.

Prisons and visions presented

    with rare descriptions

corresponding exactly to those

    of Alcatraz and Rose.

A naked lunch is natural to us,

    we eat reality sandwiches.

But allegories are so much lettuce.

    Don’t hide the madness.

San Jose, 1954