"I feel that writing is fifty years behind painting, and for that reason I've proposed several techniques which are as simple as collage or montage. All you have to do is cut right through the pages of any book or newsprint, lengthwise for example, and shuffle the columns of text. Put them together again at hazard and see what you have for yourself. There will be a newly constituted message. Do it. Try it. Use any system which suggests itself to you. Make your own words or the words said to be the very own words of anyone else, living or dead. You'll soon see that words don't belong to anyone. Words have a vitality of their own, and you or anybody can make them gush into action. The permutated poems set the words spinning off on their own into ripples of meaning which they didn't seem to possess when they were first struck and then stuck into those phrases. Poets are supposed to liberate the words, not to chain them in phrases. Who told poets they were supposed to think? Poets are meant to sing and to make the words sing. Poets have no words of their very own. Writers don't own their words. Since when do words belong to anyone? Your very own words indeed. And who are you? And who are you? And who are you? And who are you? Passing through the viewer and through the flexible mirror, back and forth, in and out. Crystal forms and folding mirrors, the folding boy kissed by a crystal halo, distant sharp windows and pale Swedish sunlight. Bus, the suburban house. Swedish modern furniture, water hyacinths in a yellow bowl. Winkling from crystal mirrors. Fear of the pocket without a switchblade. Fear of the streets empty of enemies. Fear of the china blue northern skies. William S. Burroughs, March 22nd, 1970."