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Best Famous Lisa Zaran Poems

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Written by Lisa Zaran | Create an image from this poem

Dreams

 It is later than late, 
the simmered down darkness 
of the jukebox hour. 

The hour of drunkenness 
and cigarettes. 
The fools hour. 

In my dreams, 
I still smoke, cigarette after cigarette. 
It's okay, I'm dreaming. 
In dreams, smoking can't kill me. 

It's warm outside. 
I have every window open. 
There's no such thing as danger, 
only the dangerous face of beauty. 

I am hanging at my window 
like a houseplant. 
I am smoking a cigarette. 
I am having a drink. 

The pale, blue moon is shining. 
The savage stars appear. 
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


Written by Lisa Zaran | Create an image from this poem

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.
Written by Lisa Zaran | Create an image from this poem

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 

Written by Lisa Zaran | Create an image from this poem

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
Written by Lisa Zaran | Create an image from this poem

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


Written by Lisa Zaran | Create an image from this poem

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
Written by Lisa Zaran | Create an image from this poem

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 
Written by Lisa Zaran | Create an image from this poem

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
Written by Lisa Zaran | Create an image from this poem

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
Written by Lisa Zaran | Create an image from this poem

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

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