• Trilogia de Power Chord: Vol 1
  • Trilogia de Power Chord: Vol 3
  • Rock ’n Roll Poems: Vol 4
  • Veedeos
  • FREE MUSIC
  • Photos
  • Steven Clark-isms
    • "Steven Clark" is pronounced "Steven Clark" in all languages because Steven Clark is universal.
  • Steven Clark's Words Of Iron
    • Steven Clark's Words of Iron...The OddEssay
  • AssMerch
  • Contact-A-Hauler

The Ass Haulers

  • Trilogia de Power Chord: Vol 1
  • Trilogia de Power Chord: Vol 3
  • Rock ’n Roll Poems: Vol 4
  • Veedeos
  • FREE MUSIC
  • Photos
  • Steven Clark-isms
    • "Steven Clark" is pronounced "Steven Clark" in all languages because Steven Clark is universal.
  • Steven Clark's Words Of Iron
    • Steven Clark's Words of Iron...The OddEssay
  • AssMerch
  • Contact-A-Hauler

Steven Clark's Words of Iron...The OddEssay

Reincarnation Of A Bluesman  

All grown up now, an adult with no future and no past, no training to speak of. As a child my goal was uncomplicated, focused, I wanted to be a weathered leathery old bluesman, traveling the delta alone on foot, playing every 1920s backwoods juke-joint with saw dust on the floor and homegrown hooch on request, fifteen cents a bottle. Sit at the rough-hewn wooden bar, pull the cork out of the pint bottle with my teeth and drink, play when I’m drunk enough, leave when I’m ready. The nomadic troubadour without a map, just a National Steel tucked in his gunnysack, and itchy souls on his feet. 


   My teacher asked me what I wanted to do for summer vacation, I told her I wanted to hop a Greyhound to the crossroads and sell my soul to Ol’Scratch for blues power. Her face looked like a puzzle with some of the pieces gone, but if that disturbed her, what if she knew about the secret booty tucked into the bottom of my book satchel, what if she knew that I was packing a straight razor like I had heard all of the real bluesmen did.  See I would as often as possible, sneak my dad’s straight razor from the medicine cabinet and carry it to school stashed neatly in the bottom of my Superman book satchel, lunch-bag, school paste, milk-money, straight razor, just the bare essentials. When I had that thing with me, I felt as though I had secret super powers just like the man of steel, hell I was the man of steel, cold steel. Just as soon as one of those pink-cheeked little crackers called me a ni**er, or a guit-fiddle pickin’ coon, I’d reach into my satchel and pull out my blade and lay’em open deep and wide. I’d stand over the little punk and in a gloat I’d laughingly say, “Well look at that, we are all pink on the inside, ain’t we!” Pretty lofty goals for an eight-year old white boy with a red plastic guitar. 


   My grandmother used to watch me and a cute blue-eyed blonde neighbor-girl after school while our parents were still at work. Granny had a tall rice bed about two and a half feet off of the ground, back then it seemed as high as a treehouse. I would sit underneath the giant bed with my back against the wall (I learned that early on too, keep your back agin’ the wall) and the neighbor-girl would lay across my lap on her belly with her pants down around her knees, and as we hid beneath the bed intersecting at the crotch forming this preadolescent “x”, I would softly caress her pouty little eight-year-old ass. She wanted the lioness’s share of the Popsicles that granny kept in the freezer for after school, and I wanted to see what a real moneymaker looked like in the flesh, I thought the arrangement worked out just fine, she got double her ration of popsicles per day, and I got weird fiery butterflies in my stomach that I was yet to understand. She was a Popsicle whore, and I was her John. One-day granny came in to make the bed and busted me in the act with my sweaty little palms pressed purposefully against neighbor-girl’s pillowy pink trunk. When my parents got home from work that afternoon they decided, upon hearing the horrifying news that their only begotten son was a demented sex fiend that they would take away as punishment for my lechery, my prized little red guitar. My heart pumped hard and fast, full of rage and panicked terror, this was my first run-in with the man over a young piece of ass, and only the beginning of a long and torrid history with loose women. Inside my head I said, “Fuck’em, I’ll blow the harp like Sonny Boy.”  Now harmonica is a beautiful instrument, and I love few things more than to hear one played properly, but that was the longest two weeks of my life, and the only two weeks since that I’ve spent without a guitar handy, exceptin’ a couple of Superbowls back when I lost to Big Dougy, and the time I had to pawn it to get my car out of the city impound. When I got that little red guitar back that Thursday afternoon it felt better than cold cotton sheets on a hot August night. 


   Now I’ve never been big into the good book, but I sure loved going to vacation bible school each Sunday, mostly because I got to wear my fancy blue three piece suit, and partly because neighbor-girl was there, and her sweet little onion was beginning to ripen, talk about bringing tears to your eyes, hot damn, she could. My mom never did understand why in the middle of record summer heat an eight-year-old boy would want to dress up in his full-on Sunday go-to-meetin’ clothes. When all of the other kids wore shorts and tank tops, I was decked out to the hilt, I’d clip my tie on in the morning, wink at myself in the mirror, and think, “Shit-fire ol’man, you sure do cut a fetchin’shape!” The suit came from a Sears catalog, but to me something from somewhere else, anywhere else, was exotic, Illinois may as well have been Italy in my eight-year-old mind. It was 100% Grade “A” polyester, but with it on I felt like it was made of armor, and I was a slicked-out high-toned successful scholar of the open road. Sundays also meant fried chicken and lots of family coming over. I would sit in the corner of the kitchen with my greasy chicken leg and my tall attitude, watching and listening to my extended family mauliin’ the spirituals as grease dripped from my elbows.  Silently I’d ponder why none of them could clap or tap feet on time, why were they always on the up count. All children are born with rhythm,  even white babies, that’s a natural known fact, I had rhythm in spades and they were quietly trying to breed it out of me with these weekly anti-groove gatherings. Most Sundays I would eat alone on the front porch swing, trying not to hear the rhythm-less unmelodic quasi-musical racket resonating from inside the house. I would just swing and eat, daydream about my old friends from the road, my days as a field hand, the razor in my boot, and defiantly count to four over and over.

09/02/2021

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Weatherman 

As I crossed the baking-hot parking lot towards the grocery store that awkward thing happened when you are suddenly in lockstep with a stranger, she was a weathered granny type lugging one of those large purses pregnant with crumpled coupons and cheap hand lotion that looked like it was a quilt in another life. I could tell by her knurled hands and leathery smoker’s face that she had spent too many lean years in a poorly ventilated fluorescent lit factory and sunshine to her was as rare as luck or a kind word. As we walked elbow to elbow in the blinding sun I turned and looked her square in the eye with the seriousness of a judge handing down a death sentence. 

“You know if they see us walking in together like this people are going to talk.” 

“Do I know you?!”, she barked back slightly shaken by another human voice. 

“Probably not.” 

“What’s your name? We’ve met!”, she asked electric with intrigue. 

“You’re thinking of Charlie Sheen.” I said. 

“NO! I know who he is. I’ve seen you before!” 

“Just imagine him when he was twisted on drugs, the tiger blood phase.” 

“No. What’s your name?”, she asked now caught in my sticky web. 

“Steven Clark. But you’re thinking of Corey Feldman.” 

Her face grew flush, “Oh God no, NOT HIM! That rapist!” 

“Someone once bought me breakfast at the Kentucky Derby because they thought I was Corey.”, I replied. 

“Honey we have met before!” 

“Maybe. I use to do the weather on WAVE 3 about ten years ago. Did you visit my booth at the state fair?” 

“Oh my! Really! No, I don’t think so.” 

As we entered the store I offered her a cart. 

“Take the small one, if you take the big one you’ll just fill it up with nonsense. I’m only here for an onion and some beer but I’m still using a cart. Had a horse kick me clean in the spine, lots of nerve damage.” 

“Oh No! Bless you! Thank you, nice to meet you!”, her head bobbled in feigned pity as she took the small cart. 

“Nice to meet you too, have a great day. Fight the power.” 

As I walked away towards the waxy jungle that is the produce section she shouted from the long line at the pharmacy, “Your weather was always the best!”

08/11/2021

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The mostly true story of "Natural Machine"... 

"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

 

01/13/2020

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Gypsy Wedding. 

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. 

 

12/29/2019

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Dispatches from the sub-basement of hell: How Steven Clark regained his sanity and lost his spark, a birthday reflection. 

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.

12/13/2019

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The Ass Haulers Rock & Roll Band and Show Review, Liquor Hole, Ky, U.S.A.

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