from Sassafras diary 1858



If I taught you to steep tea
If I couldn’t get
To drink with me.
If I hear some such murmur
While you
Wait to drink it
If your face draws in this
Late day light
If I then let you lay
The shade and tealeaves
Across my body
Soaking the past off me
If then we are
If then.

later then

When my fevers came
You crawled in the mud
From middle-night
Until dawn
Digging up the deepest
Sassafras root
From the dried mud
Hills and I heard
You boiling those root
In our iron pots
And I heard you blowing
The sticks that fired its smoke
You came in to me
Carrying the root like snakes
And steeped them over
My sweated
body until
Those vapors
searing to skin
And when I was
So dried-up inside that
I saw the torturers from my
Life tumbling in front of my eyes
And eating my soul
I came in and out of the fevers
and saw you
Lay over me dripping
Water from your mouth
Between my blistering lips and eyes
And you bled out the poisons
And demons from
My head and
The devils in flight
from my putrified body.

tried to
Break your body
This land,
When you
When you
Were rabid eyed
By seeing nothing but
the miracles of the sky
Didn’ come to you
As you glared down the sun
That scarred your eyes and
scorched you skin
When you finally screamed
I lived.

Those days and night
Hours on hour
When you drunk all
Of the liquor that was supposed to
Keep us warm the whole winter and
Ran Out into the woods naked
Against the snow and I found you
Frozen on the rocks under
That rotted damn with
Your blood froze on your brow
Your eyes grotesque
Like they were seeing death
And miracles at the same time
Your face sunken as a three day corpse
I carried you on my shoulder
Across the river and
Couldn’t feel my feet or hands
Ice was breaking off of my hairs
And all I heard was it my breathing hard
And the crunch of my footfall
We made our way and you
Slid over my arms and I held you
And screamed like a mother damned
Cradling her dead child.

I tied you to the bed
Next to the fire rocks
And I read the Christian Bible all day
And night for days and nights and
All moments were one
Then I chanted
The Buddhist prayers I learnt
On the ships in the Devil seas
Out of Cape Horn
I said these prayers to you
Over and over and the Trantrdics
Of seed soundings of ages
That I heard from Pyra on
The Indian Ocean
Sri ram, shivaya Ram
Ram shivaya ram sri ram
I screamed and
Couldn’t fall silent
Till I yelled into a trance
Till I

I found this book of yours
With other prayers from the Jews
And saying from the Gypsy slaves of Europe and
I prayed over them
Prayed and prayed when you were
Firing through the terror
The torments of your soul
On you face and
Your body stiffened
Pitching like the sea
Your organs seemed to want to burst
Out of your body
And I gave up
And I gave up
And I gave up and I cursed all those gods
And I screamed
And I clawed at something to grab

When you woke
When you woke
When you woke, you growled
“Get me out of these fucking ropes you fucking welp.”
And then you just
Were cleaved to my neck
Licking my skin and then you were with me again
You were.

When green faded
In with the winds and
The rains, swooping through
With a wave of the
The sun and you came asway
Over the hill
Your torso like
Liquid marble
Commanding the fields themselves
This again
Just as I saw you at first
And you came down
To me
As the wind timed
The shade by us and you knelt
At my feet
Took my arm and I saw
The western sky in the steel flecks
In your coal eyes.

The next winter I knew
How you
Were dead inside even when
You said the same things and we did
The same things, but you had no life
Even when I had learned your ways
I knew you were here but I lost you again

I stood in the black autumn creek
Every night where we first loved each other.
Night when you passed
Out on that holy fire
And I shivered
That I would hate you
I must finish my life and
Go back on the sea and I prayed that
If then
Your soul would return.

I saw flames
On the water
Heard the vile echoes
Seep, seepseepseep through your flesh
That was red and wet with
Firelight
Standing over that flame
Like a god cast out
Through miracles visited on this night
So we cast out to sea
As if we were
If then.


Sassafras diary 1858