Tim Barrus Blog
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the bullies who live in toilets
we speak to bullying and abuse
on playgrounds, on sidewalks,
on the bus, but we do not speak
to bullying and abuse that
occurs in toilets because we are
ashamed/ teachers are afraid
and bullying is rampant even
if the media has refocused on
different parts of the news
cycle,…
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Open Letter to Patricia Cohen, Economist, New York Times
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Your analysis of economic survival is just plain wrong.
I am writing this from a hospital bed. This bed is a black hole of ruin. American economics is not unlike genocide. It kills with a particular focus.
The inevitable confrontation found in the structures of self-created inequality invented by the…
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the lone and narrowing
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the lone and narrowing but
now your left breast down to
fatal wreckage behind the blur
of cancer’s tomb you were
at risk because the other one hiv
has disowned diseased outcomes
deep-buried and banished to the
marrow’s snow whose frigid hands grab
us all seeing as the sun has…
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A Psychopath is a Psychopath is a Psychopath
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Rising heat is the enemy. But can we afford the time it will take to rid ourselves of the lack of values that blockades the Paris Agreement.
Whenever I use the word, psychopath, the New York Times nervously runs, retreating behind the word civility.
They will refuse to publish this.…
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feeding the lion
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it’s like feeding the lion the ferocity of bone/ there are no other beds for him to sleep in/ his brother’s cock is a hardening of the weight he carries
in the gravitas of the secret whips he knows he cannot speak to or for or
of/ thin-framed and the…
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The Family Ate the Family Dog
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the family ate the family dog
appalachia is unconditional surrender
replacement parts and arguments
poverty and the truck shop
passing through the bedroom window
swallowed by the cardboard
that has replaced what glass is left
school bus in the morning frost
of growling smoke
pickled meats and vomit, dark
corridors,…
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pacemakers and arrhythmia
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i will never leave appalachia/ i know that/ it just is/ i do not love appalachia/ i do not know how to love a place/ i hold no romance for it to my naked breast/ the beauty of the blue ridge is more ruthless than you can know/ that soft,…
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Ginger’s Pasture
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when old ned died, we had to drag
the horse’s body with a tractor to
a pit i had spent a day digging/ i
had loved that horse, and could not
shake the feeling that we were
hurting
him by dragging his dead weight
with a rope tied around his…
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THESE APPALACHIAN HILLS
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ginger is never here/ he tends bar in asheville, and he’s a drug dealer/ like i give a shit/
people make their own decisions/ consequences come and go/ he’s a great fuck, and we spent two weeks here a long time ago/
appalachia is about many things/ a long time…
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in these appalachian hills
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in these appalachian hills
groaning under not an anchor
but a lack of them reading
itself is like the scrap dealer
bent so close to poverty one
can only wonder why it is
white people mainly cannot
bring themselves to understand
that reading is a warship
that has kissed the…