Something Solid: The Nineties: Trooper (for Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum)
La Tazza was a coffee-shop in Manayunk, where I
was stationed with Chris one autumn, semester-break
night in ’97. We’d been through a brief, coffee pick-up
room, down a stairway, which guided you narrowly into
a steep-ceiling’d, spartan, red-painted basement.
Jeremy’s posse, all in army-jackets, picked us up,
and we all wound up in an apartment, steep-ceiling’d
again, on Main Street. I didn’t know Jeremy well
enough yet that night to understand that he was uncharacteristically
quiet. I was to learn, that by then he had lost control
of this cabal, and blew in the wind. The poems sat,
wrapped in a dossier-file presentation, at Villanova,
as they lay also, in Jeremy’s brain, medals of honor
from his days as a real, poetry punch-drunk army trooper.
I envision— Jeremy walks down Main Street. In his hands
is a copy of “d” magazine, which he hopes to consign anywhere.
Rather, he hopes to dump in the river, a few blocks
down. The fame he wants is fast, or nothing. He always thought
he would make it someday. If he doesn’t, it’s not his fault.
Perhaps he should move to New York, after all. Or teach,
tutor, bartend, give up the architecture routine. His brain is
a jumble of low and high. It’s worth something to him, to be
big. Why starve? Why play pauper? It’s true: unless he feels
royal, royally protected, he can’t write. Main Street dead-ends:
it’s ruthlessly midnight. When Manayunk would lead to
Center City, Jeremy was destined to find me, not
backing up third-world, New Jersey shenanigans,
waiting in a coffee-shop, to get punch-drunk on poetry.
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