THE NEIGHBOR

_____It was already late in the afternoon when he came home again. He placed his hat on the counter by the brushes and the coffee machine. He took off his shirt, his favorite shirt, and he placed that on back of the only chair in the house. Then he sat, heavily, if that was possible for such a thin man, onto the furry little couch the landlord had left there for him. He sat, and he looked, and he gazed at his hands, and he looked out the screen door for snakes, and he listened as the quiet slowly filled up with the sounds of tiny things; a bird, a dripping, a distant turn, another bird, the humming of the air. These were all his things now, the sounds, the screens, the lonely air (lonely chair) - these were his now. She would not be back. And in fact, he felt a kinship with all the lonely chairs and all the humming in all the world, and any screen door opening and closing was, in a way, himself moving in and out. He was back, part of the big picture again, and no longer made small by his connection to a single , swinging cylinder. Still, he thought, it is funny how the smaller one gets the larger one feels______Now he knows in a universe of sadness all things are sad, the laughter of children, the cups in their cup places, the doors ajar and closed and swinging, all are content in their bed of sadness. And in sexual universe all things are sexual. The gold stars painted on the glass twirl into the bellies of women, and the rugs are waiting, and the corners of buildings are stiff and bleeding. Everything pushes out orgasms, orgasms everywhere in the sexual universe. The singing of the washing machine, the staring flowers, all these make the sexual universe restful and safe. All the people walking around with universes on their heads, pounding each others sacs with small exploding pistols, speaking languages that no one outside their universe really knows the meaning of. And they all sit there in cafe's and waiting rooms, pressing their sacs together, listening hard for the meaning of these distant swirling fires and colors that fall through the atmosphere, drinking up every poisonous sound, every sub-zero day, every starry, starry me. (moment) And as he peers now through the open window into the universe of unspeakable objects, he hears no whispering, no teardrops, no burning of cattle skin. He will not be driven from here. He will not be asked to interpret. He will not be required to mute his fluid and hold anything back. Nothing will come here. He steps in. All is quiet. The grass is quiet. The loneliness is quiet. The quiet is full and he has forgotten to blink for many minutes._____Everyday is a jungle. And I walk among head hunters. And I hope to return with detailed drawings of the flower and fauna .. Every night I hear beating. Drums down the mountain, and singing. I stay inside, but the mosquito are eating me alive. There are holes in the netting, and dried old blood from ancient insects. I have a fever, and I wonder if they know I am here. (remember that she is so hungry, so thirsty, the tiny stars that fill the shape of life pound against her with unceasing poking, and she runs from them calling and she sucks up the clubs and the lights through a straw...like that)_____r.l. jones