Californium

CF 98

[My friend Marina Peterson edits a chapbook series based on the periodic table called Errant Elements with Gretchen Bakke. They kindly consented to letting me write about the revolution’s BFF Joshua Clover under the entry for californium, and even more kindly agreed to let me be publish it here on the first anniversary of his death. The only formal constraint was that the piece had to be 750 words long.]

Joshua Clover was first synthesized in 1962 near Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Isaac Newton was his ancestor. Joshua’s first tattoo was of a falling apple. His first book of poems begins with his mother: ‘Ka-Boom! They’re making glass in Nevada!’

I first met Joshua in 1978. Even in Boston we knew another world was possible, if only we could figure out the necessary chain reaction. We walked the city coming and going from suburbs after the trollies shut down far from the twisted reach of parents, speaking of California.

‘Home. What a concept.’

Incandescent adolescents, talking our way through matinees of North Dallas 40, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Breathless, before Beavis and Butt-Head, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Sneakin’ In The Movies. We tried to make the whole theater misbehave — turn the theater into a blast zone. It never worked.

When I got to Berkeley in 1982 I walked alone up a fire trail in the brown hills high as MK Ultra. I thought I heard a baby cry in the shadow of a mushroom cloud, and then the ghost of every conversation we had ever had revealed the class gradient overlaying the topography. From the white professoriate streaming down from hilltops to Chez Panisse to the Black and brown sub-proletariat working fast food in the Oakland flatlands and a few stevedores and longshoremen in the new container terminal down by the docks of the city.

When we were exiled together in Iowa City Joshua got an MFA and I studied film. In January we watched Desert Storm in Iraq like a Missile Command screen in an arcade, and in March we watched Rodney King get beaten nearly to death on the 210 by LAPD. When Joshua got a gig spinning records at a warehouse, I wrote Boss DJ Ivan Bosky on the sign at the door. Joshua was filled with hope when Los Angeles exploded in May of 1992.

In 1994 Joshua came back from Chiapas committed. On his way home he had sat in the sun on a sea side boulder in Baja with a gray laptop, and realized he could be an ad for thinking different, and it made him throw up in his mouth a little. We lived near the marina in the former Mt Herman Baptist Church. There was a swing, and a palm grew from a hole in the floor.

Joshua heard Kreayshawn forecast riots, and he made sure they detonated. The shockwaves made the East Bay tremble. Oscar Grant Plaza was ground zero. They built a commune. They almost took Traveler’s Aid, Henry J Kaiser. They took care of one another. For a hot second they didn’t have to justify their existences by having bosses.

Through Joshua I formed covalent bonds with T(KK), CC, J, W, J, H, G, and … especially S and Niccolo — a whole alphabet put together to make a better day .

We reached our half lives. We had been slowly tarnishing from room temperature exposure to society, somewhat toxic, irradiating some around us, and I, so clumsy, managed to damage you. After, our love was constantly in the dark, but constant as the north star.

Your last published poem began

‘It was true that the more I hated people the more I loved cats.

Then people started to surprise me.

Often this involved fire or coca-cola

bottles with petrol which amounts to the same thing.’

Joshua lived in Sea Ranch, one hand waving free, spying on the Pacific with binoculars, making friends with local dogs, working out a theory of commune and blockade, pretending to have foregone poetry, cared for by even better angels than Klee offered. Some say time held Joshua dying, but you never stopped singing, even when you were green.

The counter revolution came as catastrophe. Neighbors kidnapped. Group chats turned state’s evidence, total war, night and fog.

Ka-boom. You were gone. I knew when Geo posted your article that ended with Aaron Bushnell. You were one of the truest in Reason’s army of lovers. No escape from crazy sorrow. Some of your beloveds got tattoos of your struck match, and First of all. Fuck you all. in gothic font. Now the only way to love Joshua is to think through our predicament and throw our bodies into the struggle we were born into, win their imposed war after losing every battle so that we might start anew, so that history might finally reach year 0 and the shared planet might thrive, not belonging to anyone.