*Lisa Zaran*
I was born on September 26, 1969 in Los Angeles, California.
I did real well in school, although I was a very shy.
When I was six years old I wrote my first poem, Hallway is what I called it.
My Favorite Quotes
"Could it think, the heart would stop beating."
~Fernando Pessoa
"A poem is a naked person... Some people say that I am a poet." ~Bob Dylan
"If any man wish to write in a clear style, let him be first clear in his thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul." ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The blood jet is poetry and there is no stopping it." ~Sylvia Plath
"But we are sure to meet in here. If I keep you in my heart -- which I surely will -- and if you keep me in your heart -- and I hopes that you will -- then we will always have the other person anytime that we want to look in our heart."
~Mississippi John Hurt
"I see the poem or the novel ending with an open door." ~Michael Ondaatje
"Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers."
~Rainer Maria Rilke
AbOuT mE
I currently live in Araizona with my two gorgous children and my husband.
I am an American poet, essayist, author and artist. An i enjoy
my life as it has been a blessing. Most people know me by my poetry. Some of my work can
be found in some of these books:
All Things Girl, LitPoets, Blue Print Review, The Adroitly Placed Word,
Ugly Accent, Mannequin Envy's soon to be
released anthology, Laura Hird's 'the devil has all the best t
unes', and much more.
By the time I turned 16 I have moved over 40 times accoss the
U.S.. Some of the places I have moved to are such places like
New Mexico, Alaska, Oregon, Arizona and California.
When I was younger I spent most of my time listening to my brothers music through the room and reading poetry.
There were a number of people who influenced me. Thoes people were James
James Whitcomb Riley, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and the Bible.
I also love listening to music. I am a really big fan of the blues. As of today i still listen to
The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Mozart and Luciano Pavaratti.
PoEmS oF mY oWn
Dreams
the simmered down darkness
I still smoke, cigarette after cigarette.
In dreams, smoking can't kill me.
I have every window open.
There's no such thing as danger,
only the dangerous face of beauty.
I am hanging at my window
I am smoking a cigarette.
The pale, blue moon is shining.
Every fool that passes by
smiles up at me.
I drip ashes on them.
There is music playing from somewhere.
A thready, salt-sweet tune I don't know
any of the words to.
There's a gentle breeze making
hopscotch with my hair.
This is the wet blanket air of midnight.
This is the incremental hour.
This is the plastic placemat of time
between reality and make-believe.
This is tabletop dream time.
This is that faint stain on your mattress,
the one you'll discover come morning,
and wonder how.
This is the monumental moment.
The essential: look at me now.
This is the hour.
Isn't it lovely? Wake up the stars!
Isn't it fabulous? Kiss the moon!
Where is the clock? The one that
always runs ahead. The one
that always tries to crush me with
its future.
Originally published in Literati Magazine, Winter 2005.
Copyright © Lisa Zaran 2005
Go On
Born woman. Go on.
It's farther than it seems,
but okay.
Credit card's been stolen.
Go on.
Above all, remember,
whenever you cry,
husbands roll their eyes,
and children worry.
Go on.
The father that was yours
gets killed by a lung disease.
He loved you, at least you think so.
Go on.
Drink, smoke, do drugs.
Go on.
Drag your crippled bones
to work. Hate your boss
behind her back. Smile
to her face. Go on.
Eat. Don't eat. Get fat.
Get skinny. Go on.
Time fragments.
Space fractures.
Lives intersect.
Wombs bloom
with new life. Go on.
Wait.
Hold on.
Originally published by Dicey Brown, Winter 2006
Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2006
Talking To My Father Whose Ashes Sit In A Closet And Listen
Death is not the final word.
Without ears, my father still listens,
still shrugs his shoulders
whenever I ask a question he doesn't want to answer.
I stand at the closet door, my hand on the knob,
my hip leaning against the frame and ask him
what does he think about the war in Iraq
and how does he feel about his oldest daughter
getting married to a man she met on the Internet.
Without eyes, my father still looks around.
He sees what I am trying to do, sees that I
have grown less passive with his passing,
understands my need for answers only he can provide.
I imagine him drawing a breath, sensing
his lungs once again filling with air, his thoughts ballooning.
Originally published in The Rose & Thorn, Summer 2004.
Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2004
Girl
She said she collects pieces of sky,
cuts holes out of it with silver scissors,
bits of heaven she calls them.
Every day a bevy of birds flies rings
around her fingers, my chorus of wives,
she calls them. Every day she reads poetry
from dusty books she borrows from the library,
sitting in the park, she smiles at passing strangers,
yet can not seem to shake her own sad feelings.
She said that night reminds her of a cool hand
placed gently across her fevered brow, said
she likes to fall asleep beneath the stars,
that their streaks of light make her believe
that she too is going somewhere. Infinity,
she whispers as she closes her eyes,
descending into thin air, where no arms
outstretch to catch her.
Originally published in Magaera, Spring 2005.
Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2005
Leaves
I went looking for God
but I found you instead.
Bad luck or destiny,
you decide.
Buried in the muck,
the soot of the city,
sorrow for an appetite,
devil on your left shoulder,
angel on your right.
You, with your thorny rhythms
and tragic, midnight melodies.
My heart never tried
to commit suicide before.
Originally published in Literati Magazine, Winter 2005
Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2005
Lingering
after, when you are driving
75 miles one way just to get to her
and her wind-touched hair,
bleached white by the September
sun, the gray sky coughing up clouds,
that is when the doubts surface,
hard as stones.
it is late afternoon by the time you arrive,
the storm has already been through here.
you are not in your own element.
you are a runaway.
but, then she is there, standing right in front
of you, wet with rain, slender as a branch.
you watch as she makes her way over
and your heart gardens, rupturing red.
Originally Published in Lily, Volume 1, Issue 8, July 2004
Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2004
Subtracting Flower
You could die for it--
love,
or refuse it altogether
and know nothing
except the urgency
of youth. Men
have been
solitary
for ages
carrying the
stoniest of hearts
in their broad chests
while we women
begin too early
brush the brown leaves
from our shoulders, go
from bloom to fade
as soon as
we see the sunrise
We let our eyes go first
Then there is the limp lolling
of our hearts from side to side
the tongue we cut away
the blind kiss on the backlash of night
the giving giving giving of skin
As women
we blindly wish
past the climax of passion
as we vanish into a world of men
whose ribcages we were scraped from
Perhaps we are born of seeds
our essence crawling up the stem
to feed the bees.
Perhaps
every flower you see
is a woman
and when
she's in bloom
and when she is blooming
red
and when her leaves are wingbeats
of green in the autumn wind
beating wings of green, yes
even as the wind tries to humiliate her
it fails because
she's in love
and only she would die for it
Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2006
Love Is Believable
love is believable
in every moment of exhaustion
in every heartbroken home
in every dark spirit,
the meaning unfolds...
...in every night that sings
of tomorrow. in every suicide
i carry deep inside my head.
in every lonely smile
that plays across my lips.
love is believable i tell you,
in every scrap of history,
in every sheen of want.
what can be wrong
that some days i have a tough time
believing.
and in each chamber of my heart
i pray.
Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2006
Tenderness
All around me, the sky with its deep shade of dark.
The stars.
The moon with its shrunken soul.
Can I become what I want to become?
Neither wife or mother.
I am noone and nobody is my lover.
I am afraid
that when I go mad,
my father will bow his downy head
into his silver wings and weep.
My daughter, O my daughter.
Originally Published in The 2River View, 10.1, 2005
Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2005
How We Are
Pale scrapings of people
with lipstick ringed glasses
and cigarettes burning,
and laughter trickling up and down
their knotty throats.
What is this,
a gathering of henhouse critics?
My father's voice in the back of my head,
saying, forget that I'm dead and if you
can not do that than pretend.
I am standing
just outside the gallery
beneath the shadowy bough of a birch.
The moon is floating in the sky's dark lap.
Faraway I can hear the ocean sigh.
Now father, I am asking,
what smile are you wearing?
What color are your eyes again?
How many teeth have you lost?
Don't you think I want a kiss.
Perhaps I don't. Perhaps I don't
want to stand and pretend you
not dead while the wet, champagne
mouths of the living tell me how wonderful
your paintings are.
As they crook their fingers and strain their necks,
lose their vocabulary inside the artwork's depths
and colors.
Father, I want your reputation to outlive the pursuits
of others with their iron-on reviews after an hour's
worth of browsing at a lifetime of your work.
Father, are you crying?
Stop that sound.
Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2005
The Blues Are All The Same
~
for Jackson C. Frank
It seems almost too far fetched really,
too difficult to believe.
This unassuming moon shining like a copper plate.
These milkcrate blues.
This soft trellis of sound
wobbling through the wind
as if pouring out from the window
of some lonely house on the hill.
How beautiful it is,
the ghost of your voice,
haunting this empty valley.
Originally published in 2River View 10.1, 2005
Copyright © Lisa Zaran, 2005
You Are The Mountain
At one end of the couch
you sit, mute as a pillow
tossed onto the upholstery.
I watch you sometimes
when you don't know I'm watching
and I see you. Who you are.
You are a self made man.
Hard suffering. You are grey
stone and damp earth.
A long scar on a pale sky.
The television is tuned to CNN.
The world's tragedies flicker
across your face like some
foreign film.
You are expressionless.
Your usual gestures ground to salt.
How do you explain yourself
to people that do not know you?
How do you explain to them,
this is me; that is not me.
However many words you choose
in whatever context with
whichever adjectives you use
could not compare.
Even you describing you
would not be you.
Not totally.
Your hands are folded
together, resting in your lap.
I study those hands until
every groove becomes familiar.
Like a favorite hat,
you wear your silence
comfortably.
I sometimes can not help
but wonder what we will
talk about if we ever
run out of things to say.
You are the curve
I burrow into. The strength
I borrow. You are the red sun
rising over the mountain.
You are the mountain.
© 2002 Lisa M. Zaran
All rights reserved.
Sources Cited:
http://www.lisazaran.com/
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/lisa_zaran
http://johnvick.org/Zaran032007.html
http://www.poemhunter.com/lisa-zaran/biography/
Created By: ShAnTeL
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