Dave Bonta's "Masochist" is only a few lines long, but it packs in a strange, uneasy confession. The speaker opens with a flat statement of belief: "I believe in pain." Belief is a word usually tied to religion, so pain here seems to become something to trust or hold onto. The next image makes that pain physical and oddly beautiful: "a rose of stone in the lower back." A rose suggests delicacy, but stone makes it heavy and hard, and the poem seems to find both qualities in the same ache.
The second stanza shifts to a scene of travel. The speaker breaks an oar "in I know not what / great water." Judging by the imagery, this could be a picture of struggling forward without knowing where, or against what. The mood is bare and uncertain, but also oddly calm. The speaker doesn't complain, just states things plainly, as if suffering is one of the few solid things to steer by.