Bruce Stater
Stones
I gather stones.
I am tired.
My mind is empty.
It is difficult to work.
I gather stones.
Some broken, some smooth.
Some heavy and too large for my hands.
Some that roll across my palms, light as a feather.
Some hard and sturdy, others brittle,
Eager to crumble into grains of sand, form clouds of dust.
Some warm, soft and smooth as clay,
Separate prayers created from flesh of living earth.
Some cold and gray and dead as ash.
I gather stones.
I put thought to thought
Pebble beside pebble
To shore up rent and void of no-thought.
Mingle clay with ash and draw earthworm from frozen tundra.
I scoop dried grass from cold ground up to my knuckles
And draw my nails across the hard skin of blocks of ice.
I cover my face with red, yellow, black, brown, and green dirt.
I boil roots and mud in stone soup.
I collect the shells of insects the bones of reptiles, birds and small
mammals
And plant seeds where some will grow and others won't.
I am tired.
It is difficult to work.
My mind is empty but my arms are full of stones.
I say each stone has a meaning and make it a phrase in a song.
I sing in the language of stones because I know no other language,
I have no other way of speaking.
My tongue is heavy in my mouth.
I never learned to speak with the words others use to speak and sing.
When they learned to sing I was busy gathering stones.
When they learned to write I was busy gathering stones.
When they learned to paint I was busy gathering stones.
When they learned to carve I was busy gathering stones.
When they learned to sculpt I was busy gathering stones.
When they learned to dance I was busy gathering stones.
When they played together I felt lost.
Between stone and stone I couldn't feel the distinction between work
and
play.
It was all work to me, a slow and difficult work
Built singly of stones.
I gather stones.
I learned to say that the skipping of a pebble across the surface of
the
stream
Was a butterfly in flight in the summer sky.
I learned to say that the sparks made from pounding two pieces of flint
Were the notes of the nightingale in the autumnal evening.
I learned to say the texture of a moss-covered rock
Was the felt on the neck of a doe.
That the dry astringency of lime
Was the collective memory of a burdened and oppressed people.
That the silt flowing between my fingers
Was the cry of a mother mourning the loss of her child.
That the light inside a crystal of quartz
Was the glow of a collective consciousness.
But my tongue was still heavy with the weight of stones
And where others could dance and sing lightly from thought to thought
I struggled to lift one thing to the next.
Stone would not adhere to stone.
The dust of the butterfly's wing would not color the neck of the fawn
Whether I mixed its paint with a mother's tears
Or the sweat which poured from my palms.
When the others could mingle dance with song and thing to action
I could not even affix stone to stone
But held them together in my tired arms.
I gather stones.
And because stone will not congeal to stone,
I learned to balance stone upon stone.
Sometimes a piece of chalk resting on a slate of granite,
Sometimes a bit of broken obsidian to support a column of marble.
And I learned to say that this flake of feldspar supporting an amethyst
geode
Was the work of a fractured mind sustaining the dream of utopia
That a piece of clay wrapped around a few grains of sand
Was the arm of a loved one embracing someone in pain.
I gather stones.
I am tired.
My mind is empty.
It is difficult to work.
Copyright © 2002 by Bruce Stater
bio:
A little more than three years ago I entered into a psychosis that lasted
approximately nine months. During this time, I suffered from delusions,
hallucinations, cognitive impairment, extreme fits of terror, bizarre patterns of
behavior, occasional catatonia, and magical thinking. I was hospitalized twice and
eventually received a diagnosis of schizophrenia, paranoid type. During the first
hospitalization at Bellevue I had little insight concerning my condition, refused
medication, and made no progress in my recovery. At Metropolitan Hospital, in part
because I was treated with more respect and understanding than I had been at
Bellevue, I began taking medication, and slowly began the long journey of recovery
from schizophrenia.
I spent the next two years in a deep depression, unable to work, read, play,
experience pleasure, or hold much of a conversation. Medication helped with the
positive symptoms but the negative ones persisted. During this period I gave up
hope of ever finishing the dissertation I had been working on, dropped out of a
graduate program in Comparative Literature, and spent each day struggling to make
it to the next.
Gradually, after a period of approximately two years, and with the support of my
loving wife, Lori, I began to feel a bit more alive. I found myself living in a
world with light once again. It became easier to hold a conversation, my mind no
longer felt empty, and I could begin imagining the future once again. I began
reading. I applied to Teacher¹s College, Columbia University where I am currently
pursuing an M.A. degree in English Education. I hope to become a high school English
teacher. I currently live in Astoria, New York with my wife, Lori, and our cat,
Beans.
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Rick Parsons
Rituals of Death and Devotion
The Inca iced
their dead into mummies.
In India loved ones burned bodies
at a ghat, scattered ashes
into the sacred river.
On the Solomon Islands
they laid out their dead on reefs
for sharks to feast.
Mäoris wore wreathes of green leaves,
chanted, cried out and cut themselves,
covered bones in red earth.
In Mexico, families celebrated
dia de los muertos, sat at graves,
set an empty place at the table.
Within our home, I placed a kiss
on your forehead. My tears trickled
like a holy water baptism, lips
murmured words of mourning.
Two poems and a card,
laid under your arm,
embodied the spirit of my love
to mix and rise with yours
in smoke from the flame.
Today I hold your ashes,
touch the urn
the way I used to touch your face,
and believe like Buddhists
in the cycle of rebirth.
Copyright © 2002 by Rick Parsons
On Route 32, the Dance Floor Bus
Yesterday, he was the comb-over king,
a sad jazz ramble of jibber-jabber facts.
Tonight, he is hushed anticipation,
an unknown destination,
a step,
a dance,
a pirouette;
look at his eyes,
the way he jives when he moves.
Copyright © 2002 by Rick Parsons
bio:
I am a veterinary technician living in Phoenix, AZ. I have suffered from
depression and anxiety/panic attacks, but control both fairly well with medication.
My home is shared with six cats whose souls are to mine as child is to mother. For
me, writing poetry is the "ow, what'd ya do that for?" that is blurted out after
being smacked in the back of the head by my muse's hand.
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