the edge of fertile ground

i clean up well. i get dirty even better.God grant I never die in a fucking hospital! Let me die in some louche bistro, a knife in my liver, my skull split with a beer bottle, a pistol bullet through the spine, my head in spit and blood and beer, or half in the urinal so the last thing I know is the sharp ammonia oder of piss--I recall in Peru a drunk passed out in the urinal. He lay there on the floor, his hair soaked with piss. The urinal leaked, like all South American pissoirs, and there was a half an inch of piss on the floor--Or let me die in an Indian hut, on a sandbank, in jail, or alone in a furnished room, on the ground someplace or in an alley, on a street or a subway platform, in a wrecked car or plane, my steaming guts splattered over torn pieces of metal....Anyplace, but not in a hospital, not in bed... (wsb)