the jumping in

this time the jumping in has to do with sex/ you do mix it up with relationships and i am okay with that/ but i am not the point/ it’s not about me/ it’s about you/ it’s about all the jumping in/ i am here to tell you that i…

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…

if they call me a girl

if they call me a girl one more time, i am going to start beating them up and you can’t stop me he said (this is where i have to decide to be appropriate or inappropriate who am i kidding i have never been appropriate) okay i said https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

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…

Because It Has Drawn Blood

because it has drawn blood i let you play because it has drawn blood you pushed the catheter in because it has drawn blood for a moment that core because it has drawn blood fed on rockweed seas because it has drawn blood and silences all memories of the dead…

Someplace Else

all as frantic tongues by night less the depth of grief devours us like the past is just another dragon’s wrath and the parchment to write it on https://timbarrus.tumblr.com

time in appalachia

time in appalachia defies gravity in the aftermath of silence/ you, mister night watchman/ the gulley is filled with old refrigerators/ even your lips were cold/ appalachia will blind you, boy/ the blue ridge lightning bugs are bone and yellow/ just like your forever eyes when your wings are gone/…

Name Me One Person

name me one person who could catch up to him allowing the thin rays of autumn’s sun, he can completely vanish and has slept late escorted into a dark pilgrimage of four years times ten and all the tin cups to it, appalachia boy rags and patches bony shoulders socks…

Violence Against Sex Workers

Kirk is quite typical for a seventeen-year-old except for one thing. He does sex work to survive. One in five police reports of sexual assault from an urban, U.S. emergency room were filed by sex workers. Sex workers were younger, poorer and suffered a greater number of injuries than other…

Nothing’s Wrong on Mars

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…

i really love it and it’s making me money

the report is all verbatim our exit interview sucked dick given the same weight we are all acrobats

pretty pictures of you

the hunger for voyages was in his face https://tim-barrus.format.com/tim-barrus/238927-i-opened-my-eyes

visiting hours

they arrived when visiting hours were supposedly over of course they arrived when visiting hours were over everyone was supposed to leave the hospital so us inmates could all die alone like guards of the dark under our death sheets and our tongues of foam and our pushing the sky…

Ports In Storms

Fresh off the truck, I did not want to know how Dane stole the Harley-Davidson Low Rider. Since HIV, Dane has had one killer disease after another. He has an infusion port built into his forearm. An implanted venous access port is a device used to give treatments and take…

The Birthday Party

the birthday party became too loud/ you could not handle it/ the other guys were slightly astounded that you panicked/  birthdays in general can be a dark afternoon where everything is forgotten/ i can’t blame you/ the counterfeits of our second selves/ what’s wrong with him he’s freaking out at…

smoke and mirrors

the smoke he makes is obvious/ the mirrors in his pocket are less than obvious/ there are people who think he’s a magician/ he does have his tricks, but they’re play for pay, and they usually fall for his i am so into you game of reflective, thin ceramic masks/…

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…

While They’re Being Fucked, They Dream of Home

As if their outcalls were a tomb. I am never amazed. I am never stunned. I am never surprised. Yet I was all of this and more. INTERVIEWS WITH BOYS WHO DO SEX WORK as an ongoing project at Smash Street has taken me to places I was astounded to…

Jumping Up and Down

when the entire fucking world has become too much to fucking bear for one little old day, i jump up and down on the bed up and down up and down on the bed usually i will be joined by other crazy people and we will jump up and down…

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…

Outside

We do a lot of outdoor stuff. In the middle of this, Luca takes off. Runs back to the Jeep. The mountains where we live can seem just too big. In fact, most things can seem to be too big. He hides. But he can be pulled out. Slowly.

sometimes the past

I work with kids whose different pasts have the effect of trying to swallow them whole on a moment to moment basis. The past is not always our “little friend.” Nor is it necessarily representative of a better time in a better place. It only is. I have no fucking…