Tim Barrus: Dirt Bike Town Took Fall’s Pumpkins and Turned Them Into Food So We Could Feed Hungry People This Winter

Detention is where you go to get raped. Mommy doesn’t want to hear that. Mommy doesn’t want to see that. Mommy doesn’t want it mentioned. Mommy might get upset and when Mommy gets upset she might cry. They will rape you in detention. They will rape you in foster care.…

Tim Barrus: I Still look Away

All those times you left. Moving slowly like the criminals we were. The cops sitting in their cars across the street know when and where we go. Our existence on a time clock whose wake up dirge jackknifes grief like a rain out on the lake poised to drink the…

Tim Barrus: They mean Pornography Porn. Especially Appalachia.

They mean poverty porn. But what is the difference between poverty porn and porn pornography. What is pornography but photons. There are a limited number of things you can do on a dirt bike and I have an imagination it does not need a hot tub. Many countries and many…

Tim Barrus: Spaceship, Too

I am a communist. That alone gets me in trouble with most people, I think. Poverty has always had the cultures of the world by the throat. How poor were we. There were three of us living in a cabin on a remote lake in upper Michigan. It is apart…

Tim Barrus: The Ocean is A Slaughterhouse

And you will win your life again.

Tim Barrus: The Old Dirt Road

How is it that you can fix everything. 

Tim Barrus: One Piece At A Time

What appears to be a wall, a force field, can, in fact, be a tunnel. “Are we always going to sleep on the floor of your friends.” “Are you complaining.” “Don’t you have any friends with a bed. I liked the hotel. “You cannot afford the hotel.” “But you liked…

Tim Barrus: Titty Bar right off the Interstate.

The real Florida.

Tim Barrus: Who Told You That You Cannot Crawl Out Of Your Own Skin

Ten days and gin. You carried around your Druid stones and swam deep mysteries in rivers whose fields ran close to other shores of second selves and wandering amid the winter’s light unseen at twelve is called desire.   

Tim Barrus: His Small Dreams Was a Rage in Cups

The carnival was almost done. The only people walking through Trash Planet Central were fat girls licking licorice sticks. Their hollow emptiness was carved from class and stone. She wanted you to finger fuck her by scattering the delrium where she laughed in the observation car but you had left…

Tim Barrus: I See I Only See

I see I only see the eyelids. I see I only see but your eyes are dark to me. I see I only see the years slide past all bearing wild and bitter like the sea. I see I only see the angry and alone in their sleeping bags and…

Tim Barrus: Before the Deep Worlds Wounded Anything but Rain and Snow and Dust Come Crawling

Darkness settles on the other side of the river we would have to cross in morning. At least the bike knows what it’s doing. We slept soundly in a ditch.

Tim Barrus: Publishing Gatekeepers

Just the idea of the gatekeeper feels poisonous. We do not work for gatekeepers. Or do we. But what’s it about. It’s about who you know. People who think it’s about the writing are amusing at cocktail parties, that’s about it. They are not very amusing in most other other…

Tim Barrus: Boom Boom Now

I told you they were blind. Waiting for what. It’s not what they tell you in college you will work while you drive le-multitasking. People pull their hair out. All I have is a dirt bike. On my last visit, ghosts. Ambulance wails. The sound absorbed by rivers, all of…

Tim Barrus: Film Crew Next Door

They do not require an ID. They do not take credit cards. Sometimes you can get the Hotel Mistress to go for trade. She just sends the tricks upstairs to my room first door on the right. I have to be at this shoot by noon.  

Tim Barrus: It Was Oblivious Middle of the Night It Was The Sprawling Science In the Trenches on the Benches of Dirt Bike Town

Don’t Wake Me Up I Am A Communist I am a communist. What I do not understand – I’m stupid – is how so many writers can zoom in on this kind of socialized abuse and never bring into the dialogue that while the journalism mixed with politics has so…

Tim Barrus: The Night Wears On

Tim Barrus: Dark Places In The Hidden

Washing Your Hands Of It

Tim Barrus: But Blinds Cover The Windows

They drink Jack Daniels in Baton Rouge. Like Jack’s gut of memories, tightly curled, rips a demon with its sharp claws, rushing in to fill the void, there is a void in all of us, and that is the animal who knows us is us will always be us. Our…

Tim Barrus: The First Time We Stole a Car Was At Night When This Trick Is Shit, Johnny

Everyone from Dirt Bike Town gets it. No one expected to land in Dirt Bike Town. We just all fell here from the sky. It wasn’t Key West. I remember the spaceships. I thought they were fucking spaceships because they were fucking spaceships. People wanted out, but there was a…

TIM BARRUS: BOTH IN SILENCE, BOTH IN NIGHT, BOTH THE WHISPERING, AND THE LEAVES

The carnival was almost over.

Tim Barrus: He Was Conscious of Sunlight

Tim Barrus: First layer of four. Mainly just color to work around.

Tim Barrus: All Vanishing Things And Dust

Tim Barrus: A Thin Line of Wire

There are no lights up here on my mountain. The dark is like a heavy door.