The INside

Some of you, my adoring grovelling public, seem to be under the impression that the title of the posting is the title of the poem. No, the title of the poem is the title of the poem. Blogger requires me to title the postings, so I do, usually with some item from the poem which strikes a chord. Honestly, get it right will you.

The following poem, called Homeless, was inspired by Episode 10 in Season One of West Wing, called "In Excelsis Deo". Toby, who is based on me, as you know, gets a call from the DC police who it turns out have found his business card in the overcoat of a homeless man who has died during the freezing east coast night. Toby notices the US Marine tattoo on the dead guy's arm and so ensues he, Toby, use of undue influence to arrange a full military burial for this guy, this "nobody". The story rekindles throughout the episode; My poem is fired by all of the kindling but particularly by the scene where Toby ventures down to Capital and P, where the bums of DC find shelter beneath the highway overpasses.
Toby, we know from other episodes, comes from poor Brooklyn Jewsville. His father worked for the Yiddish mafia ("Kosher nostra", as coined in a review I once read of Once Upon a Time in America). There are many references to this in West Wing and, more than the specific references, we sense this hard-bitten background in Toby constantly, his attitude, his unending, obsessive, die-hard, would-gladly-die-for-the-cause drivenness to use his high office to help the underpriveleged. Er, OK, maybe I'm not that much like Toby...
Toby successfully finds the brother of the deceased, who, fittingly for the fable-like nature of the storyline, is "a little slow", as an unnamed fellow bum says, a character who leads Toby to the brother. At this point, all Toby wants is to let the deceased's next of kin know that his brother has died but, as destiny, morality and storyline would have it, of course has a change of heart as he is leaving, work here apparently done. Awkward as ever, Toby splutters forth, offering to take care of the funeral. There Toby is, someone who comes from a world not so very unlike the one he is re-visiting ("Another home"), now on the inside, now very much a somebody, within spitting distance of the seat of power, but with the ever-present sheathe of the fearsome street hovering in his demeanour. He is a speech writer, deft in word and turn of manipulative phrase - He writes the State of the Union for God's sake. There too is the brother, "a bit simple", unwittingly endowed with the weight of word reserved for and by The Simple. So that when Toby asks him if he knows that his brother fought in Korea, the Simpleton repies Oh I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it, sometimes people start things and... etc. Puts me in mind of Being There with Peter Sellers. One wonders whether the writers had some biblical reference in mind, seems not unlikely. The guy who leads Toby to the Simpleton could be some kind of Guide, Samaritan, something.

Homeless

Under an overpass, marginalised men were sleeping:
"Homeless", the name those inside said margins
had bestowed, for "home" was considered more than
a trapping, indeed it was the trapping; the foundation.

Beyond, beyond the realms of quilted sleep,
life goes on, though it is more raw, weather-
beaten, death creeping up the cracks in skin,
breathing down the neck, breath losing its value.

in a rare moment of seeming spillage, there came
a man from the society, the snug side, the inside
wandering into harm's way he came in peace,
seeking one of the men, bringing news.

In this rare joining of worlds, this soul fusion,
amidst the rareness, the cold biting air, the
urban desperation, we the spectators noted
a gritty past in the society man: another home.