I Was Staying in the Castro District

I was staying in the Castro district, 
I came to sit by the bed of my dying brother, oh boy, 
it was Halloween when I arrived,
Six-foot men with beautiful legs in tutus and heels, 
false eyelashes and lipstick, wow. 
I rode the bus to North Beach where he lived,
when they opened the door they said, 
“Oh we had bed bugs” I said “Yikes” 
and came in to sit by
the diminished, wispy haired soul my brother had become. 
But his heart still percolated with humor, 
we ate lunch, he in the bed, me in a chair, we watched TV, 
he called it “Gnaw and Order” 
and winked and smiled between doses of morphine.