An Oil Drum goes Tap Tap Tap

"Death Weeps because Death is human

spending all day in a movie when a child dies."

— Gregory Corso

Wisp of hairs in layers like a skewed photoshop panel draped across his face. A bit pale blue-electrified skin in the sense of a painter addicted to autumn splotches of discoloration. Adobe color when the skin recovers. His skin nigh-copper, except on this thighs white as monochrome'd Disney. Reddish sky, the bruises, with the veiny eyes half closed. "Half opened."

There's still gravel in his hair. I'll pluck it out in a bit. I rub my forearm, looking at his head a tiny piece of red. Huh.

There staring above, was a stuttering LED light — two in fact — the fluorescence gave an opulent radiance, probably due to the coconut oil blending over his soon to be scars wrapped across his arm in an old spiral (I lathered it there myself as well as him).

It's his stump that seemed to give the most reflection, like a bald head in a 12 O'clock Arizona sun. It was a plastic little cover over the red skin — thin, there was another joke here. Perhaps make an NFL joke, how he gets mixed up with a Hopi Native, even though he's just 1/16th Navajo. Knock knock. Knock knock. Knock knock.There is a joke here, he liked racial jokes, not racist jokes, but racial. Sometimes slapstick. Huh.

There of course, was a joke I was prepping for when he woke up, an arm not his color, darkened laid there. It wasn't actually a prosthetic, it wouldn't fit, plus he was a damned fuckup not a black enlarged Ken doll. I stole it from my sister's at home mannequin, she liked to draw tatoos with a thin sharpie marker.

"Hrrrrmmmmm."

He rouses. The canvas cloth jiggles, and transforms its wrinkles. Some plastic parts bang in a rhythmic pattern. Sensual.

"You bought me the wrong arm, hhhmmmhrmmm..." I pause momentarily, looking up slowly, making sure I didn't react to his limblessness or how I thought his smile looked painful. A spotlight on him and me. Aside the bedsides, he began to hum something, something from a kid's cartoon, and then he blinks.

"It's just a joke." He coughs several times and nods off, pressing against his neck brace.

"Uh huh."

I'll try to sleep next time, in the tiny little antibacteria grade futon. Tip it over and watch him breathe. His mouth faint, his ears clear. I should turn on the TV, I turn to a channel were its darkest, so I could see reflection of him, even if the screen is bent slightly. I think about sleeping.

"Fuck." I trip over his catheter , careful, I break my acceleration by planting my left foot backward, it stops the momentum so it's not yanked out. It didn't leave. I sigh. The concept of yanking it out hurt enough mentally to think of his privates, even with the Morphine (he was allergic to most medicines, something about ulcers — something like that). He had this pickup line about his allergies, where he'd get the girl to touch him and he'd see if he'd react. Huh.

I walk over part his hair and remove the glass careful not to touch his scars. The first time I'll ever touch a man, skin to skin contact wise. He's warm. It's the blood inside him, not my own of course, being brothers was something different.

I'd carve him to be there when he bled.

"...Me, humming man, me." I whisper. Not too close. He doesn't love me that way. Huh. He has a simple breath. Inside him, the oxygen molecules are exchanged for carbon-dioxide, very boring stuff ma used to say.

Somewhere across town, I read online from a link my dad FB'd me. A girl had drowned in a lake when she tried to grab a bouncy ball that fell into an empty oil barrel, she yelled (that was in my head), and the bouncy ball probably jiggled around as it filled with water. I wanted to make a joke like those late night cable TV shows did the politicians. There's probably a joke there for him. Uh-Huh. Uh-huh. Does he like violent jokes? Will he joke about oil spills or car fires? Now that's a stretch. I forget for a second. I nod my head. He made those jokes when he found out ma got cancer, his ma I mean. His mama. His mama.