Tim Barrus Voiceover and Video: Writing is War. Poetry as conflict.

[b]Writing Is War
Tim Barrus

definitely war/ you will be attacked/ words as weapons/ protecting turf/ and as eros spins in graves/ all around you/ sand and blood/ all the raging tongues untied/ you have attempted to imbue this thing you make with grace/ but there was a violence to it you were not prepared for/ the slicing open of the guts/ always yours/ the spilling and the tearing and the teeth/ the choices were between death and terror where the last thing you expected was desire/ in the middle of it all/ the chaos and the killing/ the imploding and the going forth/ the secrets now escaped/ the weapons/ the fires and the drowning/ and/ there it was/ desire/ it did not fit/ desire/ dogging and haunting you with discontent/ swollen war/ the swirling violence all around you only was/ the writing of it was a savage thing/ it possessed its own brutality and ruthlessness/ one last great kiss/ the kind that comes with a tongue in your throat/ deep and unyielding/ all memory resolved to prisons/ all editorial collapse a surrendering/ all surrendering a whore/ writing is yet, too, an animal of war/ a ruin in the darkness where history is as inevitable as the repetition of a ticking clock/ the dust to be the dream/ midnight then/ who would exhume desire to hear or see the walking dead/ from crypts/ and them/ the screaming of the ravaged hordes/ my children/ and my swords/ my swords/