Crazy White Devil

Crazy White Devil
for Robert Craig Knievel, Jr. (1938-2007)

Long before Christopher Reeve
and R. Kelly, we believed
a man could fly if
he was daring enough,
and crazy enough,
to risk the inevitable
crash landing.

“America’s Legendary Daredevil”,
Evel Knievel was both,
a brazen boiler room broker
arguably a bit more crazy
than daring, his biggest successes
failures, crash landings his specialty,
his refusal to die his legacy,
but “crazy white devil” doesn’t quite
have the same ring to it.

Elvis, was a hero to most,
and died a bloated object lesson
to karma’s bitchiness, an asterisk
permanently attached to his pelvis,
but Evel always knew better,
understood that he was “good
at riding a motorcycle… Not
a hero.”

I was never inspired
to shake my hips to stolen glory
but I sped down glass-filled
urban ski slopes with abandon,
jumping curbs and milk crate ramps,
pushing my plain red skateboard
and yellow, banana-seat 5-speed
to their limits, relishing the rush
of wind, the brief moment’s respite
from gravity, the illusion of
freedom, unsatisfied until
blood ran from my elbows,
knees or shins.

My mother reluctantly bought me the Stunt Cycle
advertised in the back of every comic book
I owned, its “Gyro-powered Energizer station”
launching it across the lineoleum floor,
into the wall, the poseable action figure
more flexible than Knievel’s own body
ever was.

If we knew then what we know now
he’d have beaten Carter and Ford
in a landslide, served two terms
that would make the Clintons blush,
and ensured no one would ever be fooled
into believing that a plain-talking prince
of privilege was just like them.

America prefers its heroes flawed
and Knievel’s multiple broken bones,
concussions, coma, tax evasion, bankruptcy,
estranged children, and jail time
for beating his biographer with an aluminum bat
for alleging domestic abuse, were perfectly framed
by his gaudy leather stars and stripes jumpsuits.

Every jump, a risk taken
for those who wouldn’t take
their own, a reminder of
nothing ventured, nothing gained
for those close to the edge,
the moral of the story being
every successful flight of fancy
requires someone daring enough
to take that first leap of faith,
and crazy enough to do it again
and again until they get it
right or die trying.