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Rock Eater
"The Marines are a cult that works. They are a gang that's lawful." --- These words played on a PBS documentary about the Marine Corps while Mason sat on a couch wondering what to do after college. In search of something unnamed, the poems in Rock Eater tell the story of what he found as a Machine Gunner in the Marine Corps. It is a love letter to Marines and a middle finger to everything else. It is an exploration of identity, loyalty, culture, violence, love, hate, loss, addiction, trauma, forgiveness, and healing through poetry. Above all, Rock Eater is an answer to the question, "what happens when a man gets turned into a weapon and aimed at nothing?"
- GenresPoetry
175 pages, Paperback
Published February 23, 2023
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 18, 2022
Rock Eater.
At the core of this book, this book is a scream, a howl at the moon, a punch against the rain, a hardened cry for mercy, a beg to the blood-soaked gods to stop pushing and punishing young boys, once like him, from collapsed families, into the grave.
Rock Eater has to be one of the most brutal and sheer bloodcurdling experiences I have ever had reading a book, because of its sheer grisly honesty and sad songlike poetry. His trembling words make you feel like he wrote each military experience poem in his dorm bed after a day of sheer brutality. And his post military poems feel like they were written at some whiskey stained bar top.
This book is a hopeful gasp of fresh air, in terms of modern literature, instead of having to rely on the stale air left by the great past writers.
After reading the first few pages of Rock Eater, I couldn’t stop smiling because in that moment I knew, literature is not dead, Rock Eater saw to that, dragging it from the mother fucking grave with its machine gun shrapnel explosive poetry!
Here is a basic explanation of the story. It runs in four parts.
The first part is Boot camp. ‘Parris island.’
The camp he describes as the place of painful transactions, where souls are sold to the soulless. The soulless, men who once had a soul, were once boys like the writer, until they sold their soul to the soulless sergeants before them.
‘They call it the infantry because we’re child soldiers.
17, 18, 19, yes, I was older,
But they broke me just the same; made us all colder.
They put the weight of the world on our shoulders.
As high school seniors we read “Lord of the Flies”
Then spent a year dehumanised,
hazed, terrorised.’
When I checked into the Fleet I realised
We were our very own brand of “Lord of the Flies.”’
- Lord of Flies. Rock Eater
The way Mason describes bootcamp is best described as a living nightmare, a place where men get made into bloodthirsty, lead lustrous monsters who love to KILL.
‘We’re Rock Eaters
Whole Lotta Hate
Whole Lotta Weight
We’re Gatekeepers
We’re Hatebreeders
I’m a Rock Eater
I’m a Big Dicked
Murder Demon
Fire Breathin’
Coke Fiendin’
Godless Heathen
Rock Eater - Rock Eater
The second part is about his deployment to Syria. His first taste of war. A place of red skies and refugee kids who know more about war than the soldiers deployed there. The way he describes the bombs lighting up the sky is similar to how a poet from the past would talk about a midsummers night dream. Mason seems to mix violence, death, and sheer unwanted truths into something so poetic and beautifully bloodcurdling serene.
Howitzers roared for death and destruction
As if the fiery sun
Painted a masterpiece
In the wide Syrian sky.
Such beautiful chaos.
- Syrian Sunsets. Rock Eater
The rest is to be discovered yourself, otherwise I would give too much way. But the most heart hitting poems in this book is when he returns to his mother, a marine, a success, a hard working man who is fighting for the freedom of his country. These poems brought a tear to my eye.
I could go on and on about this book all day, but I think I have left enough of what to expect. When I told the writer how much I love this book, he replied, ‘I don’t know how relatable it is to a civilian market, but it’s my story.’
And I replied, ‘I never went to the military, and what you went through sounds heartbreaking g, but I do think there are others out there, people who who suffered trauma, heartbreak, happening that altered them in a way that made them a stranger to the world around them. When I read it, it moved me not because of the actual army experience but the underlying story of a young man in search of meaning, who found an opportunity to have value, among a ring of demons that altered him unchangeable, then abandoned him, and so did the world. A lot of what you wrote related to me because when I came back from my four year travel, I came back a stranger to society who had no place.’
To end the review, his final response was this.
‘I mean the Marine Corps is an institution known for eating its young.’
And I believe this final quote is a perfect explanation to this book.
If you can handle brutal truth read it now.
If not, go away, live a little, hurt a lot, then come back and read it.
Best book of the year. By far.
At the core of this book, this book is a scream, a howl at the moon, a punch against the rain, a hardened cry for mercy, a beg to the blood-soaked gods to stop pushing and punishing young boys, once like him, from collapsed families, into the grave.
Rock Eater has to be one of the most brutal and sheer bloodcurdling experiences I have ever had reading a book, because of its sheer grisly honesty and sad songlike poetry. His trembling words make you feel like he wrote each military experience poem in his dorm bed after a day of sheer brutality. And his post military poems feel like they were written at some whiskey stained bar top.
This book is a hopeful gasp of fresh air, in terms of modern literature, instead of having to rely on the stale air left by the great past writers.
After reading the first few pages of Rock Eater, I couldn’t stop smiling because in that moment I knew, literature is not dead, Rock Eater saw to that, dragging it from the mother fucking grave with its machine gun shrapnel explosive poetry!
Here is a basic explanation of the story. It runs in four parts.
The first part is Boot camp. ‘Parris island.’
The camp he describes as the place of painful transactions, where souls are sold to the soulless. The soulless, men who once had a soul, were once boys like the writer, until they sold their soul to the soulless sergeants before them.
‘They call it the infantry because we’re child soldiers.
17, 18, 19, yes, I was older,
But they broke me just the same; made us all colder.
They put the weight of the world on our shoulders.
As high school seniors we read “Lord of the Flies”
Then spent a year dehumanised,
hazed, terrorised.’
When I checked into the Fleet I realised
We were our very own brand of “Lord of the Flies.”’
- Lord of Flies. Rock Eater
The way Mason describes bootcamp is best described as a living nightmare, a place where men get made into bloodthirsty, lead lustrous monsters who love to KILL.
‘We’re Rock Eaters
Whole Lotta Hate
Whole Lotta Weight
We’re Gatekeepers
We’re Hatebreeders
I’m a Rock Eater
I’m a Big Dicked
Murder Demon
Fire Breathin’
Coke Fiendin’
Godless Heathen
Rock Eater - Rock Eater
The second part is about his deployment to Syria. His first taste of war. A place of red skies and refugee kids who know more about war than the soldiers deployed there. The way he describes the bombs lighting up the sky is similar to how a poet from the past would talk about a midsummers night dream. Mason seems to mix violence, death, and sheer unwanted truths into something so poetic and beautifully bloodcurdling serene.
Howitzers roared for death and destruction
As if the fiery sun
Painted a masterpiece
In the wide Syrian sky.
Such beautiful chaos.
- Syrian Sunsets. Rock Eater
The rest is to be discovered yourself, otherwise I would give too much way. But the most heart hitting poems in this book is when he returns to his mother, a marine, a success, a hard working man who is fighting for the freedom of his country. These poems brought a tear to my eye.
I could go on and on about this book all day, but I think I have left enough of what to expect. When I told the writer how much I love this book, he replied, ‘I don’t know how relatable it is to a civilian market, but it’s my story.’
And I replied, ‘I never went to the military, and what you went through sounds heartbreaking g, but I do think there are others out there, people who who suffered trauma, heartbreak, happening that altered them in a way that made them a stranger to the world around them. When I read it, it moved me not because of the actual army experience but the underlying story of a young man in search of meaning, who found an opportunity to have value, among a ring of demons that altered him unchangeable, then abandoned him, and so did the world. A lot of what you wrote related to me because when I came back from my four year travel, I came back a stranger to society who had no place.’
To end the review, his final response was this.
‘I mean the Marine Corps is an institution known for eating its young.’
And I believe this final quote is a perfect explanation to this book.
If you can handle brutal truth read it now.
If not, go away, live a little, hurt a lot, then come back and read it.
Best book of the year. By far.
April 16, 2022
BOOK REVIEW TITLE: An Inside Look
If I were to find and read through a Marine’s diary or field journal, I imagine “ROCK EATER” would exemplify the content contained within its binding.
“ROCK EATER” gives readers an intimate look inside a Marine, to see behind all the bravado and prideful facade, to discover the raw, vulnerable humanity hidden in a killing machine’s depths.
There's plenty of masculine humor and anger in “ROCK EATER” to appeal to the manliest of men, but it's softened with periods of insightful and heartfelt honest self-assessments or truths.
I experienced a roller coaster of emotions while reading the author's poems- poems that read like a juicy story that I didn't want to put down!
Anyway, I highly recommend this book to any veteran or poetry lover looking for a taste of military service, again or for the first time.
Top 10 Recommended Poems:
1. DED. FOR MARINES
2. (DON’T) FOLLOW ME
3. ROCK EATER
4. MACHINE
5. WHAT’S YOUR 9-LINE?
6. READY
7. USELESS WISHES
8. CULTURE
9. ROTTEN APPLE
10. REVEILLE
Honorable Mentions:
1. THE CALL
2. SYRIAN SUNSETS
3. GEN POP
4. TEARS
5. HEY DOC
6. SUICIDAL-MEMBERS GROUP LIFE INSURANCE (SGLI)
7. STANDARD ISSUE
8. RIBBON STACK
9. BELT FED ROSARIES
10. ECHOES
If I were to find and read through a Marine’s diary or field journal, I imagine “ROCK EATER” would exemplify the content contained within its binding.
“ROCK EATER” gives readers an intimate look inside a Marine, to see behind all the bravado and prideful facade, to discover the raw, vulnerable humanity hidden in a killing machine’s depths.
There's plenty of masculine humor and anger in “ROCK EATER” to appeal to the manliest of men, but it's softened with periods of insightful and heartfelt honest self-assessments or truths.
I experienced a roller coaster of emotions while reading the author's poems- poems that read like a juicy story that I didn't want to put down!
Anyway, I highly recommend this book to any veteran or poetry lover looking for a taste of military service, again or for the first time.
Top 10 Recommended Poems:
1. DED. FOR MARINES
2. (DON’T) FOLLOW ME
3. ROCK EATER
4. MACHINE
5. WHAT’S YOUR 9-LINE?
6. READY
7. USELESS WISHES
8. CULTURE
9. ROTTEN APPLE
10. REVEILLE
Honorable Mentions:
1. THE CALL
2. SYRIAN SUNSETS
3. GEN POP
4. TEARS
5. HEY DOC
6. SUICIDAL-MEMBERS GROUP LIFE INSURANCE (SGLI)
7. STANDARD ISSUE
8. RIBBON STACK
9. BELT FED ROSARIES
10. ECHOES
April 18, 2022
A man's heartfelt journey through the Marine Corps from recruit to senior. Rodrigue does not hold back any of his feelings regarding the loss of his friends or his own struggle of maintaining his humanity in a "cutthroat Corps."
April 17, 2022
This is powerful and raw. Every poem is impressive, but the last is a truth.
May 27, 2022
Wow!!! Mason is CRAZY talented. One of the best collections I’ve ever read. Maybe the best ever. Just incredible. Blown away.
September 8, 2024
So insightful. Simple words, profound messages. Found myself having compassion for those I don’t want to understand
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews