Diana Dierks (d.)

Sabatimi and I

Sabatimi, as for fortune I have less committed eyes.
All the monsters tower above the towers.
The monsters hear no cries.

The monsters emerged when the wind thickened.
While our world fit for the bedridden, and the singers too,
and red rover, red rover, come lovers linger....
Ours, opposable thumbs, four fingers,
fit for gloves, fit for humans,
not for monsters, not for now.

Around what bends did they come to our piers?
So frighteningly ugly, like living victims from the spears.
But victims they sling.
And they primp, champs today.

Once we had plenty of time, plenty of pick me up, pickups too.
Sabatimi, the monsters change directions and speed.
The only remedy at the time was flight.
Brother, can you spare a night?
Can you spare a meal?
Can you spare a horse to the far eastern Steppes?
Can we fly at noon?
Guess the hemlock spruce won't grow on the moon.
Our power lines, Sabatimi,
you can have with or without their juice.

Sabatimi, I am going crazy. They are too.
We are all going crazy.
We MUST live again as we did before.
Need a miracle? I think.
I am not broken, yet.
Seems all I have is my instinct,
I feel it like a double-barreled arrow.
Come the sparrows. See there?
Come, make young and green the compound of tomorrows.

Where are the monsters now? lumbering more uncertainty?
Might they change their guise? what again??
No military quite designed for their last curtain.

Sabatimi, I ask for a miracle.
And he states so firmly, "Wine is shipped far and swift,
now craziness goes everywhere far and swift,
imbibed you with.
You are strong yet. They are swine, unweaving sense."

He says,
"Far, far, far, away it IS pretty and the people are healthy.
Along the groves the eons are playing,
and come to us this foul hobbling --
the sights of your wrecked roads,
your dirty clothes, your ruined dwellings,
your many yet-decorated dead.
Change has its confusion. Dead have their lost children.
Confusion and the lost -- a change has cobbled."

Sabatimi says,
"The eons are playing. Love is still at work.
Our groves have your quintessence of fruit.
The hardest thing for you might be the truth."

Oh, hard to understand, I start thinking,
crazy world, how many children are curled up alone?

Far away who asks, who vouches, for Sabatimi?
He, likely, comes around in the gloom and peril,
and during the subjugations --
with monsters a-sweep -- was then I sought him.
I can snap my fingers and make him appear.
And when HE snaps his fingers...
like right now... SNAP...
I begin saying, "I have committed my eyes again.
Crazy world, beyond the old stars," I utter,
"crazy, and I fathom, fathom hard,
hard as far, far, far, far....
I fathom a way to like it, low and late,
adrenaline will suckle this damn fate.
Monsters accused, you won't douse me anymore!"

*pause*

Giant monsters, a magician, and a protagonist
in this work about the times.
Do I appear to draw my pictures only between the twined?

Find your belongings in a torn trash bag;
wash from your mind that destitute smell.
For all that has been ravaged there should be as much relief,
but sadly, as much agonizing grief.
Love, it could seem for a while a devil,
it could seem for a while a devil.
Ah, and your secret hours surpass all wondering.

And what is all this so big that becomes our tales?
Oh, while it is heavy -- I might heave a speck from its enormous scale.
Call out while roused.
Heave a wish.
A wish, that is all.

Is a wish so small?


Somewhere Revs the Rover

He is good
for the plethoric place to place.
As the lobed leaves flit under a royal sunny.
Oh, he afloor on floors -- cost not one penny.
And spigots tapped. And he adores to fill his one trap.

Rock, clock, and dial, and rad,
peculiarities aren't we glad?
Concerning the heavy weights, the limber wills,
well, we make 'em laugh, make 'em weep.
make 'em wait until...

grope around in the darkness,
carry the light where we are rich in candles.
Somewhere revs the rover, he's good,
he is man for mantle,
he's in his gourd, out of his dark lord,
and he carries his mud under his hood.

I am in a tavern, windows appear to shake.
I get a thought --- glaciers grinding, groaning;
a condor beating wings against the wind.

"You there, you know, you know
the vixen's litter grows fat,"
and I am asked,
"Do you know the rover?
because you are growing warmer where you are at."

Card game, dealt turns,
turn, turn, turn --- turn the turns,
the applications of the wheel -- virtually infinite.
Your deal.
White birch, white cedar, with gradually smaller limbs,
and white dwarfs become the size of Earth,
now it's your spin.

You say to me,
"You seem to know this theater. Do you know the rover?
He just had a brew with you."

I ask, "Did a lizard crawl out of his shoe?"

"That's him. He is stuffed with motor and being and more,
and now more brew.
The blacktop is but a doorstep to his high seas,
and his testes lead him,
while buxom he goes --
around the thousand barley lands.
Shrines, and whisperings, and slitherings,
like spun into his wet and sleeved glands.

"Yet, sea vessels in his eyes,
like so many, many water drops supplied.
Special sails in his optics.
And thread stuck through his clothes can hardly hold him,
for he knows he's fast upon the earth.

He came and left.
I might be impressed.
I did see him pay with one whale of a squall from his pocket-purse.
Didn't catch his lizard, but there are lost kingdoms worse.

The fellow talking to me
wants to catch his lizard,
catch up with him whenever he can.
He is big on the chap,
like his route could be some great cash when put to mesh,
points of silt-up cavities, upon a wondrous draped map.

But you know, you know, well, you think you know
until you feel him pass you by;
but then! you might think you are like him so.
I did, like far palmetto and albatross sewed into my soul,
yes, you'll think you are like him too --- if your guess is
you are fast upon this earth also.

He is motor, being, and moreover,
sea vessels in his eyes,
they like thousands of water drops supplied.
Where escapes the spray of the gorge
of what he has peeled and pored o'er.
So sense the guy.
He's got fords, gone over, under his hood.

And something revs the rover
of our lonely magic's worth.
While disquietude more our art,
but oh, he's got motor humming in his parts.


About the Author

Diana Dierks is a writer and an artist. Notably she worked at Child Find in New Paltz. The small crew that worked there successfully located missing children by first using an 800 number. Also this grassroots organization became a national center for educating the public on the problem.

And since she first arrived in New Paltz, 25 years ago, she has brushed up with less than ordinary circumstances. And thrown into a lengthy illness -- today she writes out of a sense of shock.

She has not sent her work out much, but it has been established in print. She has focused her efforts on the ByLine Magazine poetry contests, and won four awards since 2004. She likes inquiry and newness and cultivates it in her work. She often presents her work at The Mudd Puddle Cafe readings in New Paltz.

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