Jeremy

I wonder if he's even alive today, the poet a crazy megalomaniac I knew introduced me to back in the late '80s, Jeremy, the poet who in the two years I knew him was in more mental institutions than anyone I'd ever met. On the phone he was a gentle, sensitive soul, a little younger than me and with a spiritual curiousity he needed to be a little careful about, but nonetheless genuine. He'd call at two in the morning sometimes — I'd hear from him every month or two — and after awhile I wouldn't mind, as he'd read a poem he'd written, or make childlike observations about things he'd seen or done. Why do they keep locking up this gifted, sensitive soul, I'd wonder after hanging up, and after a year or so, I decided to meet him in New York City. We went to a cafe and he talked, about the way he had on the phone. I liked the way he seemed to look up to me, it made me feel like an elder poet, who wouldn't like to feel like someone's mentor? Then we went outside and walked down 3rd Avenue, and I saw: he was like a child who wanted to touch everything he saw. He talked to drunks and bums and prostitutes, rich people and middle-class mothers pushing strollers, he couldn't keep his mind off anyone. It was way beyond 'childlike innocence', it was a disease, he'd never be able to live, some guy could kill him, he had no discrimination whatever, and that was the day l learned why the 'magical child' within us all needs a grown-up around sometimes.