Tim Barrus New York Times

Instability can kill. So inconvenient. I mentor boys at-risk. They are easily suicidal. Jumping into the abyss is with a shrug. Way before COVID. All the usual suspects. School failure, HIV, every other STD, suicide attempts times ten, sex work, addiction, sex addiction, rage management, homelessness, grand theft auto, shoplifting,…

A Deviant’s Morning Eyes

the way it unfolded was not unlike the way it always unfolds/ we are at opposite ends of a picnic table/ six feet apart/ but connecting/ boats in the immediate distance bobbing about on the water smelled of rich people somewhere else/ i am sitting with andrew as the dew…

Smash Street Takes Sex Ed on the Road

The Smash Street Boys have created their own sex-ed class because they contend that adults give out too much misinformation, and they say adults think kids are too stupid to understand what is being left out. So they invented their own curriculum that is based on questions and dialogues all…

Rabbit Hole

Boys with HIV kill themselves at rates eight times the rate of typical adolescents who attempt suicide. Children who kill themselves, kill themselves for a reason. And society recoils. The institutions of society need for the people in that society to want to stay. Or at least pretend to want…

Tim Barrus in the New York Times

I work with boys at-risk who have HIV. People do not understand at-risk means a spectrum. Suicide is at the top of the spectrum. Boys and guns. The gun is an insurance policy if things get any worse than they already are. Often, they’ll hide the gun in their stuff…

2 Straight Boys Hungry As a Straining Rope

the camera speaks because that is what it is designed to do/ digging down past the edges deep/ turf or the boundary lines kinda fade away/ they are almost scared/ the disingenuous would call it new horizons/ actually, what straight males fear the most is shit/ the land of the…

Your Bride’s White Dress

white people do not think about hunger because they are rarely hungry and there you on the corner and the twisting it’s always worse in the rain and then you ache with sucking old white cock my summary of what is wrong with this picture the lips and teeth of…

To Burn the Sky

dusk was difficult to burn the sky we thieves together, and the lovers and the friends they all too often cum slowly such moments like distant moons and stuff and lawns can fade in suicide’s revenge so complicit with the living and their first violent year of holding you naked…

dragged into the privacy of his smallness

mixed messages deep within the hole the lot of us live in where our real selves are like piano keys that get played inventing and reinventing our ragged perches up here in the branches with the crows https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

gives one pause

he drives you crazy but your job is to be there for him not when he isn’t driving you miss sugar nut but when he is often, the world they know has rearranged the furniture he cannot understand that the room he is so dead set against is the same…

MISHA, GO TO BED

Misha doesn’t sleep. We have that in common. I try my best to get stuff done when the house is quiet. Sleep for boys who have been raped and sexually exploited is a big bag of worms. Medical professionals in Public Health (which should be renamed Public Bullshit) never ask…

Tent

in the morning they always have to pee somewhere mainly on a tree/ crawling out like rabbits from a magician’s hat/ izaak, randy, josh, and devon plus the rest of them like pilgrims for the whole marvelous and unvisited earth that blinds them in the aerial buoyancy of their raw-boned…

When Everyone Else Has Washed Their Hands Of Him

He doesn’t really look at me in the eye. He seems quite bored. What does it mean. It means he’s scared to death. Attitude is only attitude. “Gotta light.” I always gotta light. It seems infinitesimally small. But it’s something. But it’s something. But you gotta give the kid credit…

Tim Barrus: NYTimes: We Need A Revolution in Art Museums

I work with young adolescent boys at-risk who do sex work and have HIV. Mainly, I teach photography and video art. The traditional museum and the traditional foundation would be appalled by us. Sex work is a crime. That makes the boys criminals. The issue is actually poverty, and that…

Having Children

I no longer “get” having children. Why would anyone want to have a child today. I do not mean to be critical. I am just asking the question. Whenever I articulate this to my friends, people look at me with a mix of horror and disgust. What is wrong with…

duh

Tim Barrus: New York Times: Boys Raped

Some kids have never had real parents. They have always parented themselves. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/style/snowplow-parenting-scandal.html?comments#permid=31096013 College admission? I work with young adolescent boys with HIV. In rural Appalachia. Reading about parenting is like reading about Mars. Every boy has been raped. You think not. Overly dramatic. Yet rape is a way of…

Two Black Eyes

What is the smile about. Usually, it’s about making you go away. At first, you have to let it go. It isn’t easy. I am quite capable of making the mistake that family is the problem. Family usually IS the problem, but it can be the problem of indifference. Boys…

a land of red wolves

the red wolves are dead shot by guess who fat old white men who will kill anything they don’t like the fucking look of/ https://tim-barrus.format.com/about

The Poetry of Billy the Kid

billy the kid speaks/ he realizes he has nothing to say, just duh, billy does not do well out in the real world he was a fuckin’ inward kinda guy, actually, they broke into that house, there was a pool there, and for an hour they owned it, billy the…

U R

u r not some shallow dumpster dive u r not trash u r not what mom and dad tell u what u might b u r not grace u r not above it all u r not stupid u r not some teacher’s prejudice u r not always strong u…