"The first time I ever met Diane

The first time I ever met Diane she was carrying a giant stuffed Sylvester the cat that nearly as tall as she was. I will never forget such a perfect dramatic entrance into my life by such a funny, dynamic and talented person.

—Nikki Johnson"

No one can tell you

ahead
of time
What
It’s like
To sweat & shake
& cold turkey
and be Afraid
to stay
awake and
Afraid
to
sleep
and
Afraid
to not do
either.

—Booze ’N’ Loozing Blues, Diane Burns, 1981

A story about Diane Burns, from The Villager's Obituary:

"In 1988, she was among a rather illustrious group of writers — including Allen Ginsberg, Joy Harjo and Pedro Pietri — invited to Nicaragua to take part in the Ruben Dario Poetry Festival, sponsored by the Sandinista government. (Poet Tom Savage remembers Burns pulling out an “enormous gun” on the plane. “It was just amazing to me; it was so bizarre.”)

The Sandinistas revered poetry and welcomed the group like foreign dignitaries, especially Burns, who Holman recalls was “sort of the star of our little troupe down there.”

“Little did they know what trouble they were getting into,” Holman laughs. Apparently Burns and Pietri got so soused at the presidential palace that Pietri interrupted a meeting between the Sandinista government and the Soviet ambassador to look for his shoes.

They then convinced Minister of Culture Ernesto Cardenal to marry them and took off honeymooning, much to the dismay of Pietri’s wife back in New York and members of the American Indian Movement, who called up Holman worried Burns had been kidnapped. "

I am Tequila Mockingbird. Yes, I am related to Isaiah Mockingbird, and yes, I am that face in the moon on the cover of the Carson’s record album. And the Marshmallow beer girl, and that’s me on every stick of Land O’Lakes butter… I can trace my lineage back to the beginning of time when the world was nothing but a scrap of mud on the tip of a loon’s nose.

—Diane Burns, from her 1983 essay, Tequila Mockingbird

And a poem written for Diane, from our lovely Lorna Dee:

Sleep now, Sweet Sister. Your light always burned sheer through the fog and grime; the grit and glitter of our youth, some kind of measure. Your black booted steps, your silver and shave; the times the blade of the tongue entered and swayed. You were always a knife and a glade, a silent opening, a threshold. You were mind and will over beauty. You were a spit-on finger in the split socket of truth. I remember you. I will always remember you: your light ever-bright as a Manhattan skyline, riding that one-eyed poetry home.

~ Lorna Dee Cervantes, 2/22/07

In closing, I can add nothing more except I love you, beautiful soul. I'm sorry for your pain. I hope your suffering is over. Thank you for your heart and for making the world that much more bearable and real and lovely for it. You will be remembered well.