You Are Over Your Head

your hair and shampoo and open the windows you have been thinking again and let me lick the lemon from your hands we will drink gin tonight and laugh at all the wounds we ever had and wonder how it is we dream of one of us is the other…

U Can Write An Entire Sex Scene Just About the Eyes

so this morning, he turns over in his wondering where he is, and just before it all comes back to him, to face me with his bedroom eyes, and i am, as always, taking his photograph/ he rolls his eyes/ he asks if there is anything about me that has…

pushing inside you

i would push you up against the tree/ you asked me to please push you up against the tree/ especially in the sodden rain/ you were like a watermark/ all the delicate debris of life/ the smell of your shit and sweat/ the weather never really mattered/ your insides were…

Fish Gut

there is no forgiveness in beds of rusted stone/ your flesh and bone and cock and hole incontinent with the despair of desire/ you lived in a coven of us but our eyes had been sewn tight with fish gut/ https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

already patching memories

like a roof that leaks fixed with duck tape and bones spinning and dripping and waiting for the test results/

The Only Time

the only time in my fatigued, hollow-eyed life/ that i have ever felt good about or exhilerated/ to be living my life – another world for a threadbare existence – such as a gaunt survival deteriorates like radiation leaves a telltale trail of half-lives wrung out, and drained was when…

crowded by the sky

dragging your mind across the sawdust floor/ all your southbound ships are tombs of cries crowded by the sky/ your crippled wings are rusted, and your amputated bones have been thrown into the potter’s field of savable parts/ https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

the photography is a sketch

the sketches they make of the boats out on the lake do not reflect the lake/ the lake as they know it is something they can jump in/ naked, of course/ even in the rain/ and they will go on falling and failing and flipping everyone they know the bird/…

the legends say

there is always a narrative/ usually one divorced from reality/ stones and bones/ many narratives were created from revenge/ if they say you are a criminal, you are a criminal/ if they say you get fucked in the ass, you get fucked in the ass/ if they make the point…

where nothing moves to chase the sea

the only noise from him is an almost breathing/ an almost punishing sunlight swarming/ where nothing moves to chase the sea/ https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

a quiet emptiness

the rut of emptiness up to the broken hills/ ravages without variety amid the timid spilling of the stars at night/ clicking with the crickets all the sad way to a parking lot/ https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

in a snow globe/

you cannot compare my life or the life i have lived and cherry pick it apart, and then stand back, and pretend you have accomplished anything/ i know exactly how bizarre it sounds to people i call the normals/ i am not sure anyone is truly normal, but i do…

Fuck the System

fighting for existence each whispering of chaos and disorder or each failure by assiduous marking in the book of marks his eyes burn his face in hunger standing quietly by the window overlooking the graves by memory of the night marches old with the revolts of awe https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

after the first frost, you have to leave/

there are no glass windows, only screens/ i have seen it in the winter when you have to take a broom and push the snow drifts out/ you want to leave before the first frost arrives with it fox cub bite/ access is by canoe or kayak/ only a few…

And There Was the Turning of the Earth

the various cures that evade us — temporarily — are always seen as impermanent as his tongue inside my mouth and the tower was your eyes gone wrong/ what is evident is that we are dust as well/ the sun from another state was the way you turned in bed/…

metronome

a tell all told 2 cover the lies unpeeled/ earthen swells that are the graves in delicate balance with waiting and waiting and waiting/ the novelty has worn thin/ there is no sun today/ there are only voices collected like a metronome/ https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

Tim Barrus Photography

i could smell his guts a mile away/ if he looks utterly privileged and has had everything handed to his martyred person, that is because he is privileged and has had everything handed to his martyred person/ in the winter he does not care but stirs when the morning cums…

Stealing Cars

now is a good time for us to be stealing cars/ there is this annoying thing called food/ in quarantine, all the cars are just sitting there waiting for someone like us to arrive and release the car from bondage/ we really really really get bondage/ we tried it for…

Carnival

on his bumble way to town/ they are all always on their bumble way to town/ this one was hitch-hiking/ through the dust and sweat/ he climbs in my pickup truck/ i let him know i was going to the carnival/ me, too, he says/ his wet shirt had stuck…

It Ain’t You Or Me

i try not to look into his eyes/ or I might get lost again/ summer ripples in the thousands/ there was no food in the grocery store this morning/ he is the high priest of sparks fly from his eyes day by day just like this day of ordinary consequence/…

Night Run

that first weight in my balls/ we run at night/ through the streets/ as if something was chasing us/ it was at our heels, hunger/ another thin rope as a high wire act/ the grocery stores no longer throw away leftover food in dumpsters/ we are on our own, and…

Blackout

Dorm

i would sit in the dormroom chair, it was not comfortable/ watching you masturbate/ we never talked about it/ we avoided it/ never exloring our own roles and participation in it/ that fire sale was not extinguished/ i no longer sit in the dormroom chair watching you masturbate/ sometimes, we…

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…

lucid questions

the lucid questions are not explorations he is going to either answer or encourage/ he holds the secrets in his folded hands and lips of salt and bed of bones where his body was the prize/