U Better Run

poverty porn like lunar silences i only take the photographs/ it’s a grave thing, to take a place, to objectify it/ our sovereign sleeping leaves no cum stains on the sheets/ you get to comfort yourself with the understanding there is a beauty to the thing/ i have seen appalachia…

For Anna

we tried shocking people out of the religious family and tribal rituals (like christmas or the 4th) of complacency, but we mainly failed/ we do know we failed/ we are not stupid people/ skin gigs exist all over the planet/ we wanted to be someone we were not/ identity was…

Appalachian General

the appalchian sky made cheap as if standstill was attracted to a fading sun and the miles of parking lots scattered once again like the dead chain of emptying pilgrim souls who have arrived in the lower reaches of the hollows from the civilized east burning wood for warmth https://twitter.com/timbarrus

It is Not Your World

you would not know this, it’s just not your world/ the best part of turning tricks is when the trick is jacking off in the bathroom, and they sorta get lost in there/ it means the whore might get the room for the night because daddy will probably flee for…

My Appalachia

cautionary bones/ we could climb the tree to get through your bedroom window/ even winter’s scalpel cold, and the fireplace was burning oak, and that warm scent would hibernate under your sheets and quilts like caves where your tongue inside my mouth was not unlike walking through the fields with…

Where Your Eyes Were

these openings, these candles in the eyes whose sockets saw desire, these and then forgiveness/ what you were was hunted down/ yielding in release, we smile in the dark knowing our names are not our names/ they are simply the names given to us, in rooms of loneliness, we would…

Toilets of Appalachia

the truck stop down the highway from the coal mine used to buzzsaw with the traction of the action/ today, it’s kinda like getting fucked in the ass in a graveyard/ the walls of the toilets are a literary subterfuge/ call joey has been dead for twenty years/ people still…

gas and groceries

this is where we used to go to buy groceries like beef jerky on the gas credit card https://twitter.com/timbarrus

ferris wheel of rust

we were insomniacs who played on an abandoned ferris wheel whose pendulum in appalachian rain was one blind eye and sullen just like you and weary where your skin leaked raw and your bones in the dark were soup inside your nerves to be so high such as we were…

This Is What Anxiety Looks Like On Its Way To Outer Space

this is what anxiety looks like on its way to outer space/ it bounces off and then consumes the room/ any room/ you could rip your heart out, and then leap into the snow/ even your bones are clenched/ your butt hole went metallic years ago/ the pacing has worn…

but you have no wings…

you have always had this breathtaking ability to jump right over all the stuff that bores you as you have always called it the bullshit of life/ you do not go around anything old or tired or useless/ you go over it as if flight might be an option but…

And I am Here to Tell You

today, sunspots appeared when you go whizzing by tender in the shadows/ the horror of your existence will not die in a legion of soldierships where the seal you have tightened up so you might live between what souls have seen as their assignment beginning with how you died at…

We Had to Stop…

When They Take The Food Right Out Of Your Mouth…

Contrary to what you might be hearing from the white, privileged, upper-middle-class activists, AIDS is not over. No quite yet. https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

toward whose delirious repose

you in your distance toward whose delirious repose suggesting structures of scars i have seem them all i have touched them all i have followed them with my lizard’s tongue i want to thank you for teaching me a  huge, huge fucking lesson/ never get arrested/ https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

Memory’s Machine

road trip with the dust and weed smoke in the car so thick, our eyes were the gas stations in the full gasoline noon/ the small town street lamps had once been crows, and all the motels had been rolling hills whose With Nothing To Return To was solid as…

Memory’s Machine

après la fête le reste rages de poussière resté derrière se masturber à l’intérieur du cerveau enregistrer plus tôt tragédies désorientées par flou si parallèle événements https://www.instagram.com/timbarrus/

Memory’s Machine

lost afternoons justly placed each mirror could be manifest beyond sex work is still work and sweat and humiliation just like any other form of work an arrangement of perspective sheets, walls, scrubbing floors in unison our lips in full abundance we brought along our gods from the pawn shops

Memory’s Machine

et sa ceinture quand il fouette tu es nu vous autorisez seulement lui baiser toi dans le cul quand il y a pas de nourriture et ton ventre grogne comme un tigre bleu a sauté à travers la fenêtre à ton lit vous dites à votre agresseur te baiser dans…

Memory’s Machine

the two of them could be silent as a blackboard/ i no longer know what it means to simply be/ their history is one of burning bones and whipped and a cigarette of fiery scars you cannot see/ who could do that to a child stop asking me that question…

Except Sometimes

except sometimes your whispers tell us what you think it is we want to know and you are as always right about a lot of things/ like how pain and loneliness are often the same thing and your books of wandering arms outstretched have brought you here/ https://timbarrusart.tumblr.com

Your Photographs

beneath what photographic darkness does your panic ride and makes no promises to return, in fact, i have never heard you promise shit/ like some kind of human contract with anyone on the planet might elude your perpetual despair/ an exile in the innocence of graves/ how many tombs have…

The Attic Gods Came By Today

the attic gods came by today from behind time where they like to be concealed/ bearing the imprint of the din, the attic gods of history’s bin/ taking out what had been thrown away, and terrorizing us to explain it/ https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

And He Would Fly Away

his heart is rubbish/ he has always lived in his own world/ he knows the outside world is there/ he has simply chosen not to participate/ but such decisions have consequences/ you try changing his wet and shitty diaper/ i double dog dare you/ any romanticism you once held for…

childhood is a dog and pony show

i no longer listen to them much beyond what they do inside their skins i do not seek answers there are none that work the whole dog and pony show we call childhood are answers that are not answers they are pre- programmed stereotypes in pink times ten and in…