{"id":3427,"date":"2015-02-07T18:48:33","date_gmt":"2015-02-07T18:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/?p=3427"},"modified":"2019-02-11T07:57:50","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T07:57:50","slug":"the-comfort-of-strangers-arguing-a-video-poem-by-paul-a-toth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/the-comfort-of-strangers-arguing-a-video-poem-by-paul-a-toth\/","title":{"rendered":"The Comfort of Strangers Arguing. A Video Poem by Paul A. Toth."},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\n The_Comfort_of_Strangers_Arguing.avi.
\n 
\n 
\nFor years
\nI’ve not dared
\nsleep in bed,
\nfor there alone
\nthrough the window
\na wind has whistled
\nin my ears,
\nand death’s next
\nof kin soon appears
\nto collect my arrears.
\nSince then, I’ve slept
\nin the living room,
\nprison and womb
\nand soon enough my tomb.
\nAnd if silent,
\nthe night remained
\nthe season of unreason
\nand conscience torn,
\nthen a murderous treason
\nwas expected
\nand nightly born.
\n 
\n 
\nIn the day,
\nI never saw the neighbors,
\nnot one, nor the sun,
\nwhether rising or falling
\nor while passing above
\nthe hours between.
\nInstead, I’d seen
\nthe suggestion of light,
\na blunted gleam.
\n 
\n 
\nNevertheless, upstairs
\nthere was one
\nfriend, of sorts,
\nthe last of my resorts,
\ndisembodied, of course,
\nbut at least
\nthe occasional voice
\nof a beast.
\nOne night, I thought
\nhe’d found time
\nto pause and make a rhyme
\nand shouted it, too.
\nIn the words of my neighbor:
\n“How could you waver,”
\n“one moment the mother of my child,
\n“the next sparing yourself
\n“the bother of your labor?”
\nBut I had made his meaning mine
\nfrom words that had stalled
\nsomewhere between the walls,
\nand as consonants raged,
\nI wrote another page
\nfor a play I had completed
\nand too many times staged.
\n 
\n 
\nEven now,
\nthe one, the other,
\nthe girl on the phone,
\nis prone
\nto regretting her leaving
\na dial tone
\nfor his grieving.
\nWhen the telephone rings,
\nI await the sound
\nof mattress springs.
\nHe never lasts long.
\nI know his usual song
\nwill give him an angle
\nto escape his sense
\nthat something within him is wrong.
\nBreaking the spell, he sings to the angel
\nhe now thinks a witch: “If only I’d thrown
\n“a better bone to that bitch.”
\n 
\n 
\nHe like, me, will recall his abuses
\nconducted out of sight
\nlike cabooses.
\nHow long the train of excuses.
\nHow great the weight
\nof what lies behind,
\nburdens carried
\nin back of the mind,
\nfor thousands of miles forgotten,
\nyet from the beginning, the cargo
\nalready rotten.
\n 
\n 
\nSome time later, I pulled my train
\nof thought to a stop at the station,
\nfor I was interrupted by revelation:
\nA neighbor’s words once mine,
\nanger spoken in another time,
\nto someone else long ago,
\nsilenced, too, by dial tone,
\nthe slamming of the phone,
\nshooting stars in my eyes,
\na conspiracy
\nof regretting
\nI’d revealed to myself
\nso many times
\nthat it now concealed
\nI was rotting by forgetting
\nall those miles
\nI’d carried
\nthe weight of decades-ago
\nunloaded freight.
\n 
\n 
\nMy next stop
\nwas a candled cathedral,
\nand I returned to that place
\nwhere for years
\nsomething in me burned,
\nthe suggestion of a darkness
\nthat would never be turned,
\nas if I’d not learned
\nthat for which I yearned
\nalways returned, whereby
\nI was moved
\nclose to perfection.
\n 
\n 
\nMy endless confessions
\nrose from their knees
\nand demanded my secession
\nfrom nostalgia’s concessions
\nand regret’s intercessions.
\nWith match, I set fire
\nto their airy alliance.
\nIn defiance
\nI inhaled
\nthe smoke of the past,
\nthen exhaled my silence.
\n <\/p>\n

\"profilepic\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My bio: Paul A. Toth is the author of four novels, including his 9\/11 based Airplane Novel (2011), noted by \u200b\u200bUSA Today as the 4th Best Independent Novel of 2011. His latest is Let’s Go Shopping, The War Is Over, a collection of his best short stories. He is also the founder and publisher of Eye Am Eye Books
\n 
\n 
\nrobin@artvilla.com<\/a>
\nPoetryLifeTimes<\/a>
\nPoetry Life & Times<\/a><\/strong>
\neditor@artvilla.com<\/a>
\nwww.artvilla.com<\/a>
\nArtvilla.com<\/a><\/strong>
\n <\/p>\n

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  The_Comfort_of_Strangers_Arguing.avi.     For years I’ve not dared sleep in bed, for there alone through the window a wind has whistled in my ears, and death’s next of kin soon appears to collect my arrears. Since then, I’ve slept in the living room, prison and womb and soon enough my tomb. And if silent, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[599,43,41],"tags":[18,136,3,660],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3427"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6801,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3427\/revisions\/6801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artvilla.com\/plt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}