War Photographer

I photograph the violence but am not part of it: Machine guns point like the cypress trees. They drop for a moment ready to erect, at the charge of desire they burst into fire. I photograph not only the cruelty but the sorrow, the silent anguish of the lost and displaced. A secure world has been upturned. In bewildered eyes I see my childhood and surmise. I photograph the young body ravished with gunshot, the strong man dismembered the tough flesh-torn women. For some, blood is a sexual wound, a cut of desire in the gun fire. I photograph the clothes-peg mission camp, flat like match sticks on the floor or a shattered crater on the moon with ribbon rags stuck on the crags. I photograph from my pinnacle of survival and pain, flickering sparks for casual glances. Only a few understand there is ecstasy torn apart but tied the man alive to they who died.