The Last Wordbender

image borrowed from Bing

The Last Wordbender

“God changes his appearance every second.

Blessed be the man who can recognize him

in all his disguises.”  --Alexis Zorba

It was 1952.

I was in third grade, living in a Navy project

deep in the cut between Magnolia and Queen Anne,

saddled with a reoccurring nightmare about

two black leopards stalking me in the schoolyard,

alone, at night, on a swing.

Elizabeth II was proclaimed Queen.

Love that Terrence Davies quote,

“It now was the Betty Windsor Show, 

Betty & Phil and their gilded carriage of flunkies.”

--glad to still be here for the old gal’s 

Golden Jubilee, where she had a stand in

leap from a helicopter with Daniel Craig,

paragliding into the jammed stadium.

Nikos Kazantzakis released ZORBA the GREEK,

but I did not read it then, too busy reading

Howard Fast, Jack London, & John Steinbeck

to notice:

“On a deaf man’s door, you can knock forever.”

Thousands in Washington, D.C. witnessed a buzzing

from several UFO’s as I sat watching 

THE ATOMIC CITY with Gene Barry, being prepared

for the onslaught of nuclear Fear in the 50’s,

and for the communist witch hunts

as Charlie Chaplin took an ocean liner to London

for his world premiere of LIMELIGHT,

and while in transit, J. Edgar Hoover

revoked his reentry permit to America.

“All right, we will go outside where God

can see us better.”

Flashing forward past pimples, wet dreams, loss

of my virginity, drag races, my discovery

of Walt Whitman and free verse

to 1964, when I was 20, starting

college after trying to make my way without

an education, having my mind altered daily

after rejoicing that THE WIZARD OF OZ

had resumed its annual telecast, having

missed 1963 post-JFK assassination,

as LBJ signed into law the

“Civil Rights Act of 1964”,

Sidney Poitier became the first black man

to receive an Oscar just as Nelson Mandela

was sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa,

and doing my part I began to date black girls

in college while really grooving on a new 

British rock group called The Beatles 

and Beatlemania burst into our lives.

“How can I not love them? Poor weak creatures,

taking so little, a man’s hand on their breast--

and they give you all they got.”

Taking a college cheerleader to see the opening

of ZORBA THE GREEK at a U District art house

and she thought it was stupid and hedonistic:

“God has a big heart, but there is one sin he will not

forgive. If a woman calls a man to her bed and he will

not go.”

The cheerleader never did call, but others did,

many others, as I interrupted my schooling

for service to my country, returning with 

an artist’s fire in my loins, with dreams

of a career in theater, in films, possibly

becoming a playwright, a novelist, and always

remaining the poet,

“Life is trouble. Only death is not. To be alive

is to undo your belt and look for trouble.”

For in ’64, the Year of Zorba,

we heard that our military advisors

in South Viet Nam were running into heavy resistance

as I graduated “first in my class” from community college

and beat to the Big Town to see

both the Elephant and FROM RUSSIA,

WITH LOVE, #2 in what would become

a 50 year film series; most of us have seen

them all and could name all six actors who played Bond;

Connery, Lazenby, Dalton, Moore, Brosnan,

and today’s 007, that chiseled rock, Daniel Craig,

but how many remember Barry Nelson,

David Niven, Peter Sellers, & Woody Allen?

“You think too much, that is your trouble.

Clever people and grocers, they weigh everything.”

During the last decade, after suffering through

The Bush Dynasty, the New Crusades,

and White House mini-rodeos in the Rose Garden,

when despair slept with me incessantly

like a dark vindictive slut, I would hear--

“When everything goes wrong, what a joy it is

to test your soul, and see if it has endurance & courage.”

In my life, Alexis Zorba has forever been pathfinder,

muse, teacher, drinking companion, fellow carouser,

compadre, surrogate father, day-warrior & jester--

always at the ready to appear, or reappear

when I needed him as I enjoy my own journey

through the maze of this incarnation;

working for more than 50 years, half a damned 

century, I finally was allowed to fold up the dress slacks,

hang up the garish neckties and button-down shirts,

to now live in Levis, to luxuriate in four-day beard growths,

and let my vehicle often sit idle several days a week.

“When seeing that my body is merely sickness and crime,

age and death, shall I--free, fearless, and blissful--shall I

retire to the forest in solitude, without companions or joy?”

(Smile) Hell, no;

my bucket list is way too lengthy,

my interests are infinite,

my networking is global,

my writing is developing muscles

I could never even have dreamed of

while still in harness.

Glenn Buttkus

November 2012

Posted over on dVerse Poets MTB

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