"I built a motorcycle named the “ClawMoto” that my buddy Jeral Tidwell said looked like a piece of farm machinery. Promptly I penned a little ditty about motos and was off lickety-split to a rally to shoot a music veedeo but the universe had another plan and tried to call their angel home by intercepting me with a sawed-off pick-up truck piloted by a knuckle-dragging NASCAR fan in a one hog town. This cosmic collision cracked some ribs, crushed my leg and bike and I went into the tunnel for the second time in my life. I called my surgeon who also rides and was partying in Vegas “What the fuck did you do?” he asked, “Get out of there NOW!”. The podunk doc didn’t dig that decision because he was losing money on the deal and basically tossed a leg brace onto my bed which I applied myself as all my bones were crushed and my leg was like a giant floppy hotdog. The cavalry arrived to break me out and soon we were over the wall and on the hot path back to Liquor Hole, KY, Had to wait two weeks for the swelling and road rash to go down, surgery, steel pins and rods, wheelchair, addicted to pain pills, into a different kind of dark tunnel, physical therapy, a year passed, and triumphant I returned. Sporting a pimptastic new pirate limp I attended the rally the following year with my buddies legendary singer Scott Mertz, legendary filmmaker George Maranville, and my legendary father Larry B, who doesn’t drink and has never been inside of a strip club, I guess sometimes the nut does fall far from the tree. We ran out of beer in the early afternoon of the first day so we starting buying jars of moonshine from the bikers. Father Larry took a few pulls from the shine jar and began having Vietnam flashbacks which was odd because he’s never been outside of the U.S. of fucking-A. George started an argument with an internationally notoriously violent bike club that I had to smooth over, and later that night they beat a man within a 1/4 inch of his life for a much small infraction. We lost Larry in the smoke-soaked chaos-choked darkness of bikes, butts, sluts, booze, and tits, and from there things went sideways, but that is another song and another story. We actually remembered to shoot some veedeo, shaky as it is, and much like filming a pride of lions take down a zebra this is simply a brief document of what naturally unfolded within that distorted 24hrs.” 

- Steven Clark

by Steven Clark and Ron Whitehead

Long ride home, wrong bus. 
Opened a bottle, tried to read, tried to write. 
National Anthem then white noise, fuzz. 
Passed out. Dreamed I dialed a friend. No answer. 
Woke up. Found the half-empty bottle of bourbon next to the half-read novel: Knut Hamsun's Hunger. 
Neighbors are waking up and going to work while I fry bologna in grandma's cast-iron skillet. 
I look down and realize I'm wearing my wrinkled ripped and filthy dirty sequined purple tux jacket and my leopard skin boots are muddy but my shirt and pants are gone. 
Nearly naked, I walk to the mirror and when I see the red lipstick smeared all over my face. I wonder who gave me a ride from the bus station and how I avoided being arrested. 
I look out the kitchen window. 
Birds are singing. 
It was a beautiful wedding. 

Dispatches from the sub-basement of hell: How Steven Clark regained his sanity and lost his spark, a birthday reflection. (12/13/19 @ 4:15am) 

Those in my tiny circle know the life and death I have witnessed, the things I have accomplished and where I have fallen short, of the good times, and hard travels. 

I had just returned from music gigs in NY to an ancient farmhouse on an isolated gravel road in the hinterlands of KY. A million light-years away from the electric multicultural life of Manhattan to cold Kentucky desolation. When I heard cars outside on the road I muted all sound in the house and nervously peeked through the curtains. Anxiety attacked and thoughts poured in, “Were they finally here? How did they find out? Have they found me? Is this it, the showdown?”. I was the only house on the road what business did they have here other than to throw a net over me and drag me off to a cold cell? I would wait in silence with the lights out until I heard the car crunching the gravel off into the distance and turn onto the state highway. The root of my paranoia was that I had been having vivid dreams of violently killing people and burying them in the hard dirt floor of the old pig barn near the tree-line. These became so vivid that one icy morning after an anxious cup of coffee I worked up the nerve to check the barn floor for disturbed dirt, or a muddy shovel. Thankfully I found nothing but slight relief. It was in this period that my sleep paralysis was at its peak and thick beams of light, pure energy, would burst through the open bedroom window at night and unearthly beings would stand at the foot of my bed communicating with me telepathically while I lay frozen yet somehow trembling. The thin cool summer sheets weighed thousands of pounds while a dump-truck parked on my chest. It was also during this period that I cranked out multiple screenplays, short stories, poems, and songs. I couldn’t write it down as fast as it was coming in, my fingers pounding the typewriter keys like Liberace mainlining adrenaline. Upon reflection, I now realize that I had gone slightly insane. Perhaps it was the country air and dry county detoxing me from the excesses of the road, or the hand from above sending me transmissions and I was just momentarily open enough with antennas up to receive them. Maybe, hopefully, someday I will be lucky enough to lose my mind again, extend my antennas and regain my spark.