Like A Stone Poem by Patti Masterman

I've memorized your body now,
All it's lifetime of scars, as if my own
And the future yet unformed scars
That tickle like an itch you can never locate.

I've felt the well-aimed rage, cutting my leg
The unfeeling machine, as it shreds my foot
The gloved fist's passionless eclipse of jawbone, teeth.

Freezing days in snow covered desert,
Hovering between living and dying-
Living death, or a dying life:
The cold alienation beneath a baking summer's sun.

A walking meditation of hunger, pain;
A thirst that never slakes
The remedy gone missing in man and beast.

I've seen days circling like a wolf,
The moon prancing like a violent intruder
Strangers stealing even your last peace of mind.

Fighting for a scrap,
Reason suspended,
Mischief as payment for them all.

For in the bible it says, woe is man, born of woman-
Man with whom the land contends;
He who neither lends nor borrows, yet everyone curses him-
His name lying in their mouths, like a stone.

(from Jeremiah 15: 10)