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Diana Thoresen Poem
Star of the Sea, dolorous and Byzantine,
throw your royal blue cloak over me,
She who weeps, La Llorona in Kahlo’s Casa Azul, paint my heart
gold under a prehistoric cobalt blue vault of heaven,
The blue! The blue! I am spellbound by the blue!
Lapis and lavender blues of a shining Limoges Mary
And lotuses on faded old Amarna tiles whisper me tales
binding me to the secrecy of an ethereal blue rose,
Azure tropical waves caress a shore strewn with white coral,
Lady Isis, come into a sea-turtle guided dream;
Sky blue rays and fiery blue flames, walk with me and scribe my
Destiny on your crystalline turquoise tablets in etheric Gothic,
Turn me into pure sapphire light,
I am swooning into the soothing blue of every iris and cornflower,
The strange bird that had been singing all along in my heart --
it is blue
Copyright © Diana Thoresen | Year Posted 2025
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Diana Thoresen Poem
"...in spring, the most delicate feathery yellow of plumes and plumes and plumes and trees and bushes of wattle, as if angels had flown right down out of the softest gold regions of heaven to settle here, in the Australian bush."
— D. H. Lawrence, Kangaroo
Paraboloid totems of evergreen hope, upside down,
Sparkling white trinkets, sparkling white dears.
‘What do we need to do now?' you ask
I got my husband’s winged gift around my neck, a blue stone dragonfly.
Isn’t my green dress an ornamental kingly shroud?
Both stormy and luminous, the cuts on my arms are still caked in dried blood;
You are sad: your heart bleeds into mine with a bit of emerald dust and ruby red sunrises;
The doctor is the Rose; I am the Flame.
You are all marble, Plato, self-contained;
I am grotesque, decaying, Lilith-born.
My scars are greyhound clouds or maybe trim poodles
Whose slightly wolfish eyes will bleed
A blazing cornucopia of yellow wattle sprigs;
Doctor, your heart is a gold mine and joyous as Spring.
Copyright © Diana Thoresen | Year Posted 2025
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Diana Thoresen Poem
Unexpectedly
inspired by a Péladan jeremiad,
the red moon laughs at the sea
and the possum-ness of the possum;
Churlish blood rays remain
a never never world utterance of the jungle,
Every lupercalian dragonfly
conspires with brooding
red hibiscus flowers;
On a night like this,
all creation winces and endures
before melting into a black water mirage
of broken feverish brush strokes
and fruit bats in a mangrove swamp.
Copyright © Diana Thoresen | Year Posted 2025
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Diana Thoresen Poem
O lady, banish my monochrome days
and weave your coppery threads into
a dim red florescence of coyote words;
There you stand draped in beige chiffon
against preternatural piety of a striptease sea
continuously playing with Prussian blue pastels.
O lady, gallantly unleash your plump cherubs
and licentious cats with that timeless witchery
of a vanilla Guerlain perfume dart;
Throw a dusty rain-soaked rose, Madame Pompadour;
I am flying into another sugary abyss of setting suns
and Fragonard silks of flickering coral.
Is it the fighting of heavenly dragons? Is it Boucher's
brushstrokes that bring us April showers
and the music of irises and champagne pearls?
Copyright © Diana Thoresen | Year Posted 2025
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Diana Thoresen Poem
Echo, you dizzy tramp,
I’m searching for my soul.
Echo, I won’t white picket fence my heart
Inside your Jackie bag with brown rusty nails;
I’m searching for my soul.
The mirror princedom of train windows kidnaps me;
I’m a white hermetic monstrosity
The earth bleeds every spring;
I steal the souls of peacocks with my camera --
O the awful love-pain of water reflections,
O the terrible grace I’m courting --
Confucius, go away.
God's Heathcliff gaze finally meets
The white apophyllite eye of my tetragonal suns;
A thousand full moons exfoliate me like a leaf.
Grow my paperwhites in water rather than soil;
Put me next to a bright window before I’m gone.
Copyright © Diana Thoresen | Year Posted 2025
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Diana Thoresen Poem
There's no mobile internet all day; Ukraine is flying drones
My mother, a sure reincarnation of Caterina Sforza
Who else would be so impeccably dressed in
A crimson jacket and a chic silk blouse when's it's anomalously hot in May?
We saw Romeo and Juliet, a Gérard Presgurvic musical. The verdict?
''Too raunchy, too loud, too much dancing.''
Me, Countess of black cats and Lady of possums —
I feel like a prehistoric curio pet in a cloud of Shalimar
And the music swims back to me
By God, it all just grabs me most violently
And I know I want to dress real nice, I'll be a funny Anne Boleyn
And I know those dead rascal Persian children will forever play with undead children
Amongst endless Indiana cornfields
And I know I am Sarah and you're Mohammed
And I know Russia and America won't always be circling each other
And I know I am from Izmir and you're from Cyprus
And I know everyone young and beautiful will just be dancing with
Their silly yellow stars on
They'll just dance, dance, dance until this strange sin is no more
They'll just dance, dance, dance light into being
And I know I'll go see that play about a Russian winemaker and a Polish musician
And I know I'll light a candle to St Jadwiga to bring my South African lover back
And I know we'll go to Uruguay and do 101 sun salutations
And I know we are Dodi and Camilla and we'll be sipping
Chilled white wine and gingerly nibbling on little vegan cakes
In pretty Bergen-Belsen
And I know we're going to become marvelously angelic somehow, some day
And I know it'll be all Belgian candies, sexytimes and Omar Khayyam poems
And I know all sensitive and non-violent males
Will be awfully useful during a crisis
And I know all hyphenated persons won't be different people in different languages
On my way home I see a stern fisherman by the Fontanka —
My blackfella heart instantly senses something, a falling black cockatoo feather perhaps
I watch a dying fish flail around fornlornly as if it was a sacrifice to some dark Reptilian god
Under the sliver of a young waxing moon
The fisherman knows the Moon Man is bad
As high priest to the Moon Man, the fisherman guards every piglet tragedy
And I know I love my hyphenated blackfella alien heart
And I know I am quite enough
And I know I am quite enough
Copyright © Diana Thoresen | Year Posted 2026
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Diana Thoresen Poem
Perhaps the dead have the last laugh over us --
Daughters bitterly weeping in front of Jesus in an old church,
(merciful Jesus, merciful Jesus, merciful Jesus, be there for Daddy)
Unknown poor relations, pond scum grifters, co-workers
(gone fishing and unable to attend the cremation ceremony
at such short notice), well-meaning relatives (I knew she'd take
it hard. Has she managed to eat and sleep at last?
You look like your father so much, it's uncanny), therapists
Bearing tranquilizer prescriptions, numinous yoga teachers, oh sattvic touch,
Oh grief boundless everlasting oceanic.
The living say people things and do people things,
They bristle with a most jarring, annoying, persnickety sort of aliveness;
What of his estate? Why is she crying in church? Must be a war widow.
Well, she's real pretty. We all lost a good man. He was depressed over the divorce.
He was going on a business trip in June.
He loathed this freakish endless winter and looked forward to summer.
He planted two apple trees. He was such an avid gardener.
I do not care for my father's peonies, tulips, clematises --
Elated, I spend days wrapped in his new pearlescent world;
Death is sweetness, soft falling feathers, a joy and lightness of being
Unparalleled, undisturbed, unimaginable;
Happy Birthday, Dad.
The dead boyishly wink at us through a freshly printed pale pinkish
Death certificate with its Mahleresque staccato --
Born in Donetsk, September 23, 1956, died in St Petersburg
May 21, 2026: ewig, ewig, ewig, Ewigkeit -- inky crow feathers again;
The dead are playful with ghostly phone calls beyond the grave,
Strangely found Buddha figurines that have emotional significance to you
And your father alone, the dead are funny, silly, impish, impossible;
The dead know things, the dead take their time as they now
Whisper and now shout in repeating numbers, precognitive dreams, crows
Touching your face after your last phone conversation
(duration: 11 minutes, 33 seconds) months before
They are even dead.
The dead are very much alright and we are not alright at all.
I go downstairs to sit in the yard and chain smoke
And I watch my father morph into a solemn,
Unfathomable Osiris as the night reluctantly falls
In a tremulous never-quite-night-St Petersburg June kind of way.
Their brilliance, their godawful brilliance.
Copyright © Diana Thoresen | Year Posted 2026
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Diana Thoresen Poem
“Go and catch a falling star.”
(John Donne)
St Barbara, a poor white gloved icy ingénue,
Has long been a dusty piece of Black Forest wood
That grew out of the ashes of Sibylline books;
The black stone is gone from the Palatine --
Only infinitesimal phantasmagoria of the sea
Dwells deep within the grave mound of the soul
Whilst carrying a torch clothed with the sun;
Nikola Tesla still feeds a pigeon every day --
It’s an aperiodic dolphin atavism.
Awakened by an unknown lyre,
Such things drink virtue from a moon beam;
Only Saturn, the herald of lavender hope,
Silently watches the humble bird
From the depths of our star-drenched earth.
Copyright © Diana Thoresen | Year Posted 2026
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Diana Thoresen Poem
Another nightly ascent up the stairs towards my solitary bedroom.
Slightly tainted with opiate night perfumes, glistening green totems await;
O souls beyond the time before time was time,
Is there a bright future ahead?
Only the note of B flat spills out of nocturnal batrachian depths.
Strange birds are howling and the black river is almost comatose across the road.
There is a mauve, antediluvian horror clinging to my window pane.
Green tree frogs, watch my sleep as I turn into a star;
I rest in the abode of Orion and my body melts into sweet smelling lilies,
Keep your sorceries around me like green jade amulets,
Trace your rainwater sigils around my bed,
Leap into my dreams and teach me your purple magics.
O pleasures of the nightside borderland,
O silly little green things.
Copyright © Diana Thoresen | Year Posted 2026
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