Clint Catalyst's Blog

It’s Saturday. Whatever plans you think you had? Cancel.

In my eternal quest to keep the “litter” in literature, it’s an honor and a privilege to be part of this event :

And yes, there’s a Facebook Page, for those of you who care about that type of thing.

[ MORE ] :

“Before the Internet, pilferage and privacy breaking were common for young gay men looking for answers and others like themselves in the words of books and magazines they were denied access to by price, age, or shame. The stories that accompany these texts are just as amusing as the text themselves. Five gay men talk about and read the text that was forbidden or they stole in their youth. The act of sneak reading is a common experience. The length one goes to do it is often comical. This will be a FREE, fun literary event that offers humor, connectedness, and an informal primer for seminal gay literary works. FREE validated parking is available in the 5 story parking structure.”

Presented by Steven Reigns and the City of West Hollywood as a preview to the One City One Pride Queer Arts Festival.

Hope to see you soon!

x0x0x

 

For National Poetry Month, 2013

[ via ] :

. . . of National Poetry Month this year, that is.

Grifted from my Tumblr, here’s :

Back When I Knew Who I Was 

i was content to spend my afternoons
wondering what co-dependent meant
not realizing that those lazy
humid daylight hours was better  
spent figuring out the physics
of dependency and codeine dreams

back when i knew who i was
i was much better than i ever thought i was
i could conjugate fuck like nobody’s business
       fuck me, fuck you, fuck it, fuck him, fuck her
       fuck them, fuck yourself, holy fuck, goddamnfuckit
i could shovel dead pets off the driveway
     that my aunt ran over on her way to choir practice
     and not shed a single tear
i could choke down every family fight about money,
every caning that would come for no reason after those fights,
every time we were forced to go to my rich relatives for dinner and we’d
find ourselves in the kitchen cooking and doing the dishes.

i believed i knew the meaning of alcohol
i believed i knew how to get out of every scrap
i believed i wasn’t gonna make 25
i believed in 18 molecules of carbon
21 molecules of hydrogen
3 oxygen and one fab nitrogen
all in a sweet mixture enough to make me
feel like jennifer beals in flashdance
twirling my ass
in front of the snotty audition,
praying for a stinking place in 
the dance-a-thon of actuality

back when my balls were the size of brazil
and my ego was the size of the antarctica
and my courage was the size of phlegm
i learned to trust few people
learned to want little
and to need even less
i learned to say “FUCK IT”

with such ease and venom
the most cynical rattlesnake
would have its underbelly turn emerald
in two seconds flat.

you could wake to find yourself in some sweet danger,
in some piss-flavored version of addiction
designed to make up for lost time,
lost ideals, lost lovers, lost causes, lost saviours
but -shit- these days,
all i find is myself back when i was
back in the conga line of perpetual desire
the territory of an incessant need
i crave my one habit of a good man
and i want to secede from
the grip of addiction philosophy,
from the colony of “i should’ve known better”

fuck that 12-step thing, i say,
i like to keep my options open
and i like having the option
to get absolutely fucked up
when i feel like it,
and not feel like i fucked up, dammit.

do things change that much?
can some stupid sign from the almighty
whip you right around?
maybe i should be looking for visions of jesus
in billboards of spaghetti sauce,
visions of buddha in men’s semen,
maybe i’ll be a much better person
if i knew who i was when i knew who i was
but who the fuck do i think i am?
i can’t even piss straight into the bowl,
can’t even tell my lover that i want to cook him
breakfast for the rest of my life,
can’t even cross against the light,
     (ooh, walk to the light, walk to the light….)
can’t pay my bills on time nor balance my checkbook
can’t dance, can’t mosh,
can’t get fucked up like i used to, not that i want to anyway
can’t take it like a man, whatever that means.

all i can is kiss who i was
back when i knew who i was
goodbye, one great big tongue smooch
and wish him a good journey
as he walks to the light
and falls off the edge of the earth
and into a peaceful hell.

i’ll meet up with him later.

— Justin Chin, from Bite Hard
     Manic D Press, 1997

from the anthology Signs of Life [ Manic D Press : 1994 ]

as well as Hell Soup [ Manic D : 1996 ], Sparrow’s collected works, self-described as “ranging from Hillbilly childhood to savage sissy.”

1:30 a.m. gazpacho in my room

red and green and tasting

like tucson like too much

parsley and cocktails on

the porch, mezcal, tastes

like tequila someone played

a trick on we bought it cheap

in mexico two bottles per gringo

over the border gazpacho and

burritos enough to feed the

neighborhood and i did because

the neighborhood was crashing

at my house showing up at sunset

to eat at my cinderblock table but

it was cool i could afford it could

afford to pay rent buy groceries buy

jugs of red wine to get them all drunk

bongs of pot to keep them all stoned and

gas tank full for road trips i

was making lots of cash and we were all

cool liberal fuck liberal we were

radical, anarchist cookbook beside

the moosewood cookbook on our bookshelf we

knew all about things like the

distribution of wealth and like i said i

was making tons of money and they weren’t

making any they were unemployed because

finding work is hard or they’re students of

in the emergency stage of the sexual abuse thing or

some other piece of laziness doctored up as

politics you know capitalism blah blah blah so

i was supporting an ever-changing band of lethargic

sunbathing potheads because i was making so much

money and yeah i was making it by leaving my body

so that strange men could fill it like a kind of

demon spirit but fuck it was my choice no gun

to my head no linda lovelace scene here and

i was really into communal living and we were all

such free spirits, crossing the country we were

nomads and artists and no one ever stopped

to think about how the one working class housemate

was whoring to support a gang of upper middle class

deadheads with trust fund safety nets and connecticut

childhoods, everyone was too busy processing their

isms to deal with non-issues like class

and besides,

you don’t think rich families have problems

you don’t think rich families have secret rapes and

alcoholic dads and feed their kids bad food with

sugar and preservatives i mean when you

get right down to it we’re all just humans,

all on the same path to destruction because

our mother earth is being raped (is it ok

if we borrow that term from your

oppression, it’s reall powerful) anyway,

the class trip is just divide and conquer,

blood money is just a redundant phrase and all work

is prostitution, right? and it’s just so cool

how none of them have hang-ups about

sex work they’re all real

open-minded real

revolutionary you know

the legal definition of pimp is

one who lives off the earnings of

a prostitute, one or five or

eight and i’d love to stay and

eat some of the stir fry i’ve been cooking

for y’all but i’ve got to go fuck

this guy so we can all get stoned and

go for smoothies tomorrow, save me

some rice, ok?

Michelle Tea

from the anthology Signs of Life [ Manic D Press : 1994 ]

as well as The Beautiful [ Manic D : 2003 ], a collection of Tea’s poetry

“This is for the hard men

Who want love

But know that it won’t come

For the ones

Who are forgotten

The ones for whom the Amendments do not stand up for

For the ones who are told to speak

Only when you are spoken to

And they’re never spoken to

Speak

Everytime you stand

So you do not forget yourself…”

 

Anis Mojgani

 

I chance upon a Tumblr post re-blogged by the teenage daughter of friends, when I was a teenager. I mention aforementioned post on Twitter; then, the following day . . . I discover news of how I’m able to pick my nose with my tongue has been picked-up and re-posted

by The True Blood Daily. In Australia.   [ CLICK PHOTO TO ENLARGE ]

[ Tumblr Blog : To Which The AU Paper Linked ]

 

Surreal? And yet not, actually.

 

Love and Super-Powers,

 

Though much to my chagrin, no : I don’t have some butt-humping Brontosaurus to send your direct. I do, however, have an invaluable relic uncovered during the most recent excavation of my abode. And like, I’m sharing. I’m sharing, Mary!

So, anyway. Yes, it’s been a minute, but I’ve mentioned Ali Liebegott‘s wicked excellent anthology Faggot Dinosaur in the past — a detail whether or not you recall, all the same : You need this journal in your life.

About the project [ Shoddy scanner notwithstanding ] :

In short, the anthology is “a visual and literary collaboration of dinosaurs knitting, fucking, and listening to Barbara Streisand! Queerness of the Paleolithic Age abounds at Faggot Dinosaur.”

Though to expound upon the extent of how it abounds . . . This gorgeous, full-color, perfect-bound compendium of cool includes contributions from Resa Alboher, Jen Benka & Carol Mirakove, Denise Bilbao, Cooper Bombardier, Lisa Brown, Clint Catalyst, Justin Chin, Lucy Corin, Carmella Fleming, Leora Fridman, Nicole J. Georges, Hilary Goldberg, Nicki Greene, Michael Henry Hayden, Diane Hoffman, Sade Huron, Elyssa Joy Kilman, Andrea Lawlor, jojo Lazar, Janice Lee, Ricky Lee, Cayenne Link, Amy Macabre, Mary Meriam, Na¹amen, Sawako Nakayasu, Kirk Read, Steven Reigns, Joshua Robinson, Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal, Roxanne, Sam Sax, Cedar Sigo, Michelle Tea, Masha Tupitsyn, Vlad Viski, Ed Wolf and Yasmin San Francisco.

[ Illustration : Victor Ray ]

It’s a charming little beast, this book. Indeed, indeed! I mean, as with Liebegott’s other works, you should already own one. Seriously. Regardless, for one lucky reader out there, I have a copy with fifteen contributor signatures to donate. That’s right, kids : the only journal in the world with autographs from Justin Chin, Janice Lee, Michelle Tea, Ricky Lee, Na’amen, Mario Ashkar, Kirk Read, Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal, Jen Benka & Carol Mirakove, Lucy Corin, Hilary Goldberg, Carmella Suzanne Fleming, your host of this humble Dot Com, and of course, The Liebegott herself. So much crazy mad queer ink smeared all up in one place, yet I plan on sending it somewhere, to someone else. What’s the T?

Well. For your chance to receive this collector’s item, all you have to do is leave a comment — email address included; my telepathic skills don’t pay the bills, ifyouknowwhatImean — by 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time, the 28th of February, Two Thousand Thirteen.

[ Illustration : Nicole J. Georges ]

As My Extinction Approaches, Still : I Remain

Your Clintasaurus Wrecks