what the eyes hold
A catalog of looking ... Everything the eyes refused to turn away from ...
Olive trees ...
Wide open stony Holy Land landscapes ... The stones were there before the land was holy ... They will be there after ...
Masked gunmen with AK-47s and shoulder rockets ... Standing in front of the olive trees ... The trees do not move ...
Dead bodies wrapped in sheets ... The sheet is the last kindness ... The wrapping is the last thing someone does for someone who cannot do anything anymore ...
Dead bodies on battlefields ... Without sheets ... Without the last kindness ...
Nerves ...
Helicopters ... The sound before the seeing ... The seeing before the landing ... The landing before whatever happens next ...
Fireball explosions ... Light that means the opposite of light ...
Armored vehicles ... Metal that moves and pretends it is not afraid ...
Vogue runway models ... In the same list as the armored vehicles ... Because the eye does not sort ... The eye holds everything at once and lets the viewer decide what belongs next to what ...
Movie stars ... Faces designed to be looked at ... Which is the opposite of most faces on this list ...
Human flesh ... Two words that reduce every person on earth to what they actually are ... Which is not a reduction ...
Aftermath victims ... The people who are still there after the fireball ... Standing in what used to be a room ...
Stretchers ... The horizontal journey nobody wants to take ...
War hospitals ... Where the sheets from earlier get used again ...
Wounds ... The body's way of keeping a record ...
Red Cross workers ... The ones who run toward the thing everyone else runs away from ...
Houses and buildings demolished by bombs ... A home is a box that holds a life ... A bomb is a thing that opens the box from the outside ...
Humans helping each other after a disaster ... The sentence that makes every other sentence on this list survivable ...
Busted concrete ... Holy concrete from the other piece ... Still holy ... Now busted ...
Twisted steel ... Ash covered debris ... The building's skeleton after the building is gone ...
Pulverized playgrounds ... The worst two words on this list ... A place built for children turned into dust ... The dust does not remember the swings ...
Picking through stones ... Looking for what survived ... Looking for what can be used again ... Looking for a ring or a photograph or a piece of a cup that someone drank from yesterday ...
Worship services ... People in a room together agreeing to believe the same thing at the same time ... Which after everything else on this list is either the bravest or the most necessary thing a person can do ...
Large group of people kneeling and praying ... The body going lower than it usually goes ... The knees saying what the mouth cannot ...
Sacred cave ... The first church ... Before churches ... A hole in a rock where someone felt something they could not explain and came back to feel it again ...
Candle flames ... Light that means the opposite of fireball ... The same element ... Different intention ...
Statues of saints ... People who stood still long enough to become stone ... Or stone that was carved to look like people who could not stand still ...
Stained glass ... Broken light organized by color and held together with lead ... Which is also a description of this list ...
Marigold blossoms ... The flower that shows up at funerals and festivals with equal enthusiasm ... The marigold does not distinguish between grief and joy ... It just opens ...
Altars ... A flat surface where something is offered ... The garage workbench is an altar ... Every piece of art placed on a surface and left there is an offering ...
Dancing in the street ... The body doing the opposite of kneeling ... Same faith ... Different direction ...
Physical human deformities ... The body not matching the plan ... The plan was never the point ...
Silvery shades ... The color between black and white where most of the truth lives ...
Damaged ancient brick walls ... Walls that have been standing longer than anyone alive and are still not finished falling down ...
Blankness or vacancy ... The empty space that is not empty ... The room after everyone leaves ... Which is also a kind of portrait ...
Personal belongings ... The things that outlast the person ... A comb ... A key ... A shoe that still holds the shape of the foot ...
Prayers of action ... Not the kneeling kind ... The kind where the hands do the praying ... Building something ... Feeding someone ... Making art in a garage ...
Extreme violence ... Named without description ... Because the list has already described it ... Every item before this one is a description of extreme violence or a response to it ...
Disposable products ... The things built to be thrown away ... Which in this practice become the things that get saved ...
Hurricanes ... Tornados ... Weather that does not ask permission ...
Glue ... The thing that holds the other things together ... The smallest item on the list ... Doing the most work ...
Sense of peace ... Not peace ... A sense of peace ... The difference matters ... A sense is a direction ... Not a destination ...
Human emotions ... All of them ... At once ... Without sorting ...
Eyes ... The tool that collected everything on this list ... Appearing in its own inventory ... The camera inside the camera ...
Two injured human beings hugging each other ... The most important sentence ... Two people who are both hurt choosing to hold each other instead of themselves ...
Long day of playing diverse music ... After all of that ... Music ... The garage again ... The saw and the song ... The ears joining the eyes ...
Hands ... Heads ... Torsos ... The body in parts ... The way the eye sees people when it has seen too many battlefields ... And also the way a sculptor sees people ... Which might be the same thing ...
Discipline and hard work ... The unsexy truth about making anything ... After the visions and the sacred caves and the candle flames ... Someone has to sand the pole ...
Faces ... Windows to the soul ... Cliché that earns its place here because by now we know the windows are sometimes stained glass and sometimes blown out by bombs ...
Bubbly burn patients ... The skin after fire ... Bubbly is a word for champagne and for what happens to flesh when the fireball gets too close ... This list holds both meanings and does not apologize ...
Prosthetic devices ... The things that replace the things the body lost ... Built by hands ... For bodies ... The practice in miniature ...
Emergencies ... The moment before the aftermath ...
Extreme hysteria ... The sound the body makes when the mind has run out of options ...
Vicious animals ... The ones that bite ... Including us ...
Crumbled dreams ... Not crushed ... Crumbled ... The way a cookie crumbles ... Slowly ... Into pieces that are still recognizable ...
Antique metal toys ... Small objects made for children by adults who are now dead ... The toy survives everyone ... The paint is chipping ... The wheels still turn ...
Roses ... After everything ...
Monochromatic fragrant petals ... One color ... Strong smell ... The opposite of the entire list ... Or the summary of it ...
Love ... Hope ... Mystery ... Ambiguity ...
Four words at the end that do not explain anything ... Four words that hold the door open and walk away ...
Source material: pre-2009 influences archive
Composed: February 4, 2026
Witness
Methodology: Wonderful Garbage
Style: Noir Chanson
Oyparaploo
