Some Information About 23 Years of Existence

by Jeff Clark

after Michaux
1970

In the shrift, she says, "It is always moving, even in slumber, never still.
It is always quivering. Too much swill, Father, and I fear the womb will get
murky, and the little one, when it emerges, will already be a sot."

Pressed, at the coast (the breakers), by the crapulous mass, its talking like
a boat turning over. Tepid sac that night, powdery floes. Taxied through
rumble-chambers.

1971

Terror in the birthing room: the little door slides back-

First mews were of pissulence, not want.

In the depot Deliriope.

1972

Antler-nubs cropped, tail docked.

Taken, in the morning, out of my box and into their fetid room. His key-sore
hands would then be rubbed.

Thrown into the sea.

Begin inward composition of
Aphorisms of Legless.

Considering: what will be my first utterance?

1973

First utterance: "Horse horse whose horse?"

Second utterance: Mal dedans.

First compositions for musical saw.

1974

Wondering: Pre-dawn? Preyed on? Prie-Dieu?

Mother says, "Please come-I have Bushmills."

1975-1978

Oil.

Beginning to understand pine trees.

1979

Meditations on Melody and Transparency.

Plug, untree, mourn my first beast.

1980

Tended by Francis in rear of Yeoman's Lounge, Anaheim Sheraton.

Fathoming his pomatum.

Who was Francis?

1981

Homemade birthday card from Auntie, in which is calligraphed:

The fiend knows the wear of his soles can be traced to two or three
boulevards in particular

and can't stop walking them!

Her gift: an antediluvian grammar book. Discover that, in "Subjects for
Themes," she has marked, "Of What Use are Flowers?," "Street Arabs,"
"Sailors," "Pluck," "An Old Fashioned Corn-husking," "Affectation and
Naturalness," "Was the Execution of Jay Unjust?"

Twirling.

1982

First hymns.

Autodialogues begin.

1983

First ejaculation-accidental-: into a jar of bath salts.

Entranced and mortified by crepuscular bird-clatter.

Parable of the Hangared Satellite.

April: receiving, as if in earphones, someone else's thinking.

1984

My impressions are dim impressions. I console myself thus: "My impressions
are merely not of this dimension."

Alas, they are of this dimension, and are like corduroy in the palace cloak
room.

Ruptures.

Church of Evangelical Freedom: Sunday mornings, Wednesday evenings. Hilarious
faux-tongues to the left and to the right. Inward guffaws.

Sometimes a small wind on the back of the neck.

1985-1987

All notions occur to me beginning, "If I were"

Swaying outside make-out closets.

1988

First Skoal fiasco.

Introduced to a breast: daunted.

Another black August: far away, cannot move anyone with my body.

Yellow paw.

Speech at Elks Lodge: "Thank you, friends, for the generous scholarship. Now
there will be a cleft in the linoleum, and between sash-openings and
-closings of flame, you'll see me descend."

1989

Defending the goal line Friday night-middle linebacker, with 150 mg Ephedrine
migraine and swollen forearms and an F in Humanities, here and there the
heart not beating-, saying to the boys, in the huddle, "Boys-aren't we
beginning to loathe line breaks like

'What a fine thing it was to walk that Autumn out of one's
Body and in-
To a death fil-
Led
With ether-booms and no more
Am-
Ber horse-dust-
Ed vials'?"

1990

Blame the Church for my being an emulator.

Writes Auntie, All I ask is that you show me pictures, that you play your
records when I have been delivered from the night to your stoop mangled, my
pant legs torn.

Excommunicated by Nature.

Waving good-bye to a billow of smoke from a mortuary chimney.

Drawn from my sidewalk into a fashionable party. Standing among six or seven
who discuss film. Am a kind of would-be participant, eating cheese,
occasionally nodding. Someone turning to me, asking, "What do you think of
Pasolini?"

"I don't know about that, but I've read Mrs. Dallow."

1991

Parable of the Hangared Satellite. The choice was given it to depart its
hangar and enter the firmament, or to rest immobile inside it, alone with the
wicked technician.

Identical dreams: muzzled dog, queer chandelier.

O good-bye Mother.
O good-bye wombwater.

1992

In depot P, prying open lockers, looking into duffels.

Imitations of Immortality

Wondering: Remorse? re: Mors?

Around the neck a noose? Collapsed halo?

1993

Sounds like altos in the deep end.

Encounter first of several scenarios of or including images of trapped birds.

1994

Quixotism.

Novantiquities.

Sidling to the organ: threnodies.

Remembering how one faded into a last Polaroid, and took a last kiss-before
an aurora he and I heard horns in the harbor-he whose pleas now leave me.

1995

Passed out, fell forward into the Royal. Struck some letters with my face: h,
m.

Why have I developed no personal logorhythms?

Terror now in the shrift: the little-

Terror now in the Hangar: the little door slides back:

Jeff Clark was born in 1971 in Southern California. He lives in San Francisco.