Pretty Boys Who Don't Like War Poem by Diana Thoresen

Tall men with machine guns chloroform all thoughts of terror under the luminous tarmac lights
A thirty-hour flight turns one into a numb Cambodian carving
After the curious condiments in business class victuals and
bright cheery pandas past border patrol in Melbourne

There is another you that has already faded into an autographic Kodak dream of stacked bones
One stray cloudlet wears a chic monochrome ensemble of delectable buttery hues

Blanched of meaning, weeks pass while the melody of colors has yet to swoon into stinging serpents
I watch pale-faced debauchees with carmine lips waltz down the granite pavements; the sunset sky will be all crushed pearl and gold leaf soon

Cezanne would paint the piercing deep blue and plant Pinot Noir grapes for an invisible harvest
A scarlet elixir of sorrow feels pelagic in the bare tree branches dressed in martyr's black

The ground floor boutique bar oozes the giddy redemption of colorlessness: only men come here to seek the velvet hand of craft and cherry beers
I know I have seen him before; his confidence betrays a man on whom life has yet to leave a silken scar

''I'd rather be having a drink with a beauty like you than get sent to Donbass.''
There is a curious brokenness in the world that spills out of the ethers, it's a black poodle playing in yellow fall leaves

If only words could wear satin gowns of carnation and crimson
Before our empty days become cerebral and beige in an accusatory whitescape of petit bourgeois amnesia
Men have wars and erections while women bristle with malice and gossip

We could be safely coddled by a quiet camaraderie of ciders
Should history ever become a shimmering reflecting pool in the Luxembourg gardens
But I trust pretty boys who don't like war to get the job done

amidst caramelized soft blues or savage tropical sunrises
They will not wrap themselves in red, blue and white to chant a mindless mantra like a superstitious old maid with cats
Sometimes the quickest way home is to flee a gorgon silence of mood landscapes and light a musically rutilant raspberry candle