To Write

To write
To let the words just fall out onto canvas
Or with words to try to say important things
Or warn some readers of some things
Or touch some people with the sounds
They recognize from their own heartstrings
Writing
Righting wrongward courses with the right words
Winds of your own inner-compass
Blowing onto sea-bound vessels
Crossing into vast unknown horizons
Seeking out the truest course
Through these vast oceans of our shared experience,
This Life,
This Mystery,
This Blinded Journey into unforeseen trajectories
We tell each other stories
To relate to one another’s woes
To catch the stone another throws
Before it shatters others’ windows
We describe
The inner Battles
We decide to fight
For reasons
Rarely understood
By even us, ourselves
And we relate
The inner rhythm
Of our heart’s own verse
The play we stage, there’s not a way
To write, rehearse
It’s all improvisation
Yet
The words we choose
In quiet, inner moments
To lay down, to use
To tell whoever listens, reads
To copy, publish, send or text
Can sometimes be umbilical
Connecting us to larger
Mother,
Earth,
Existence,
Soul,
The More
That Words cannot express. –ZL 4.26.09

33

33
a lesson year
a lessening of arrogance
but confidence
so strengthened
nothing like humiliation
to inspire true humility
with eyes to see
you'll make it through alive
you needn't strive
you need to nurture
self and others
sisters, brothers
(Reina) (Eric)
signif others
(Sarah Ana Justin Nat so many others)
daughters sons and
(NAIA) (Kai) (Ben) (Haile)
mothers fathers
(Laurie) (Richard)
(Liana) (Bryan) (Bonnie, Al)
needn't bother
taking notes
this reaches deeper
inside out
your reach is longer
feeling stronger
you've survived(?)
year
33

ZL 11.8.06

superficial

howdjya like that
infotainment?
where'd ya get that hair?
you're almost there
but mostly not
and what you ought
to do is hide away
you're playing gay
and everybody's seeing through
the artifice
you're twice as nice as
anybody thought
nor anybody does
or has or
where's your courage
to the sticking place
you never stay
you've gone away
again
disposable everything's gone
rotton
denmark
ain't got none on
this fair kingdom
SuperPower
Idol of the Hour's
wearing thin
this facile grin
so fragile
where's the fading whim
you've lived on
getting slim
you're fading into
no thing
city, it'll wring
the what-you-had-to-give
into a disposition
to decline.

-ZL 10.27.06

Dad

Soccer coach, solid
Underwater swimmer,
Dad there beside, driving us to school
With donuts sometimes,
On so many Sonoma County hiking trails,
Riffing in blues and West African rhythms
Spring lake like a dolphin around
Up and down through the water
amphibious
River, the spillway, follow fish into eddies, the depths,
Marlboro reds by the radio front window
Beer in hand
Hearing a game
There beside us
Our Dad
Picks us up
After school
After work
Drops us off
Lovely drives
Through the farmland
All misty
many mornings
Astonishing vistas
and frequently, hot-air balloons!
Drive by vineyards like ribbons through the magic land
Dad was a Dad to me
So loved to jump into his arms
As Naia does mine now.

ZL Dad's Day 06

Upstart

Upstart
glowing heart
These younger years
So full of
JoyFull, joyous
Haven't seen a
Cynical decline
Not yet defined
By firm division
No betrayal known
or war
Though you've grown up
Amidst a global slaughter
Lovely daughter
May your smiling eyes
Heal all
It needn't all fall
Humpty dumpty's fast decline
Is only tragedy
for those inside the egg
The task of Love is Truth
it needn't beg
for your repect, attention
Simply listen,
Simply
Sing and hum yourself to sleep
The tenderness
The miracle
This girl
and Her World
Perfect.

ZL 6.17 & 21.06

Pretentious Hypocrisy

I'm starting to see
That my seething's misguided
I'm frightening friends
My insistence pretentious
Hypocrisy laces my noblest intentions
I'm losing these battles for windmills
While wars fought in other lands kill
Almost eaten my fill
Of this negative vibe
Got my Tribe to attend to
Must shake my-self out of
This self-induced stupor
This trance
And just dance
For this life's
Made for dancing
(romancing this dread)
I'm not dead!
Among the living
Should be giving
Singing, dancing, living, laughing
Cannot stand for Love
If I'm convinced I stand above
My shame, regret
I wish I didn't think that I'll forget
This lesson
If I lessen credibility
I'll live without ability
To make a single difference-- must Repent
must reAlign the lenz
and take a look at me.
So sorry, ev'ybody.

ZL 6.17 & 21.06

Aspiring Clowns

If you replace my smiles with frowns
Aspiring clowns
Have seen
This strategy before
This tragedy before
For life has got
A way of balancing extremes
We cling to memes
Convinced that meaning
Will arise from life
If only we push hard enough
And stuff into our self-shaped box
The dreams and aspirations
We aspire this world to be
Say, can't you see
The spangled banner's lost its luster
All this bluster's
Got us lost in
Artificial posturing
And all these alien invasions
of our minds
By corporations
Got us blinded
See the light
Nor left nor right
is gonna save us
or themselves
Aspiring clowns
We're looking down
Into Reality-- a Very Different World.

ZL 6.17.06

Face so fake

your face so fake
it leaves me sickened
these ultimatums
woven from the air
you say it's fair
nay, necessary
all this slavery
and suicidal waste
we start to taste
the death we're causing
start another war
by habit,
to distract
but all these facts,
so heavy, true
and where were you
when Christ was crucified
His message, Peace
Has been denied
By so-called christians
hypocrites
the pharisees had nothing on you
all been gone through
too many times already
time's receding
begging, pleading
with these killers
(Us)
Doesn't seem to work
for We're the Ones not listening.

ZL 2.27.06

Fine Things

Fine things
Have a way of making
Weak hearts sing
Have a way of shaking
Wills of the easily-corrupted
Fine things
Have a way of taking
Deeply-held principles
And shoving them aside
The artificial
And luxurious
Impermanence abated
By illusory substantiality
Some call it Quality
And pay through swollen noses
Sore from sniffing in repulsive places
Vultures circling
Profit from destruction
For these wars are run by
Profiteers
And years go by
And tears go dry
Replaced by rage
Vendetta
BlowBack
What you will
Fine things
Are bought with death
The money minted by so many skulls & bones.

ZL 2.27.06

so far.

Explosion of this
Set in motion
My enemy lies
on the inside
I've tried every potion
Emotion
Implodes
and I'm left in the rubble
The trouble I've lived
The enormous collusion
Nefarious
Fate and my prideless
Contention of
Normalcy
No one Believed
So I Flailed on
delivery
Spun in the corner
By lies I materialized
but unwittingly
Fittingly
Now I'm surprised
By this
Fateless
Conundrum
My life
so far.

ZL 3.22.06

artichoke

How could I
Howl this thing
Loud enough
When will the
Hissing, persistent, relentless
Relent
for I'm
coiled like an artichoke
nobody spoke when I,
Blindfolded, took that
Irrational step
off the stage
into leftover
pizza and
milk
Oh the emptiness
cavernous
Could this be
only me
How could I
Howl this thing
Loud enough
When will the
Hissing, persistent, relentless
Relent?
For I'm waiting
Impatiently
Lost
for the moment.
(in the moment.)

ZL 3.22.06

QuagMire

Quagmire
got me
coastin'
Nowhere
Boastin' got me
Nowhere
else
I've got
the jive to
give
got minutes
left to
live at
least
cacauphony I'm needin'
Peace
my aspiration
on a short
leash
got
humility
to spare
my only
audience
the ones
who stop
to stare.

ZL 3.22.06

Virulent

up against a
wall so thick and
solid
could you call this syndrome
virulent
it's got me locked up
bound in chains and
fettered lost the hopeful
sight of
what i
thought i had to give
i'm living
just a shell of
aspiration
rumination
on the
everything i've lost
or did i
ever
have it
anyway?

ZL 3.22.06

6/6/06

the evil, lurking,
passing, frightened,
passing on
all things must pass
and do
and you or I
need not deny the evils
passing, frightened, cringing,
dying
'fraid of crying,
macho,
dying rapidly
and thrashing,
lashing out
of course
you live by swords
you know the words
are true
and you
are culpable for
this or that and
wheat and chaff and
Revelations
evil falls upon itself
we lumber forth
attempting to repair,
to heal,
even maybe love.

Keep an eye on ripples of each action.
Each of us will form the future.
Each of us lives Love,
The world transforms.
No Kidd'n.

-ZL 6/6/06

How

How does one do this?
just write down another
line?
How to arrive at a moment
when just the right
words
will arrive?
How to achieve
that spontaneous something
molecular moment of organic clarity
beauty infused with the nebulous glow of
authentic, of true in a
heavier way than you tend to see
How do they do that?
Those weighty ones
Floating and flying inside of your soul
in your shoes and your shimmer
The miracle echoes in these
and reminds us with effortless
easeful reverberance how could
we be here,
even?

Just wow
and How could we even conceive
or believe
let alone notice
how commonplace answers might be

But answering as if there really were a question
is all part of the series of detours...
the prodigy knoweth her self not
"how"
she does it, yet,

this level of brilliance,
of brightness,
of transforming gracious exuberance,
of outrageous blow-your-mind fireworx

humble.

you know you've been there.

each of us peers at best
each of us

how could you describe,
arrive the edge cliffside with crashing below,
salt in nostrils so nourishing,

godly

the whole thing's the
thing

the most brilliant are simply in awe.

ZL 6/6/06

2 S.F.

Why can't I
live up to
My own aspirations,
My own values
Felt so fervently
I'm lost
in my hypocrisy
A stalemate
It's killing me
And misery envelops
What I long for is simplicity
But what I got
So fraught
With my own momentary
Appetites
And changeability
A victim
of my weakness.
ZL

A victim of
Viscissitudes of
My own lack of character
My stillborn soul
won't learn new tricks
(New vices it eats up like candy)
Yearning toward nobility
A glimpsing into Truth
Inspires, but
Day-to-day
Eternity seems boring.

ZL 5/13/06

3 Pretentious Honest Downers

This chip on my shoulder
So loaded, weighed-down
With contempt
For the love 'im and leave 'im
Routine
of this cynical world.
ZL


So happy
So in love with her
But the weight
of Disgust
for most-everything else
I endure
in this WasteLand
is taking its toll.
ZL

I guess
We'll just
Destroy it All
With our Worship
of Comfort, Convenience,
Denial, Complacency
So Self-Involved,
We'll just wait for another
To complement, smile at us
Genocide, Suicide
Planet-Wide Crisis
Not Pretty
So let's just ignore it,
Watch TV.
ZL 5/13/06

identity dissolve

Amidst so many
Solitary
Not so problematic as
A solemn pessimistic vision paints
Some people fear themselves, alone
They fear identity dissolve, perhaps
or treasure status, domination
Do No Harm
some wisdom states
and love each creature you encounter
Let each friendship form from
Heart's own voice
Be true to dedication, follow truth
You'll lose your youth, or have already
so don't fear to be
Minority of one
At times
You never really are
We follow stars
Into eternity
No need for popularity-- irrelevant.

ZL 6/2/06