Mainstream

I let it be

All I know is people who look like they have everything
Zoom yoga teachers
who tell us that back bends represent our fraught relationships
and that we store all our emotions in our hips
because they really don't lie.
And they teach yoga on their back deck sometimes
or on an abandoned beach.

All I know is people who look like they have everything
because they deserve to
because they align their chakras daily.
I, too, would like to live in a villa by the beach
but sometimes I don't feel as aligned as I ought to.
I know a girl who charges $6000 a head 
for yoga teacher training
and I guess she's earned the right to.

She warns us not to slow our own spiritual growth
with jealousy.
And she cautions that the men on TV are coming to get us
a sanitary, locked down regime.

I try to empty my mind
while upstairs the news is blaring
and they're telling us that the men on TV are coming to save us
a sanitary, socially responsible democracy.

Everyone tells me to be scared of different things
so now I'm scared of everything.

Sometimes I'm frightened of the mainstream
but usually I don't mind it.
I don't like what they're selling to me on TV
so usually I don't buy it.
I let it be.

I'll probably never be as enlightened as the women on my screen
but still I believe there's a light in me.
And anyway, what does being enlightened mean?
Maybe a life spent in the sunset isn't a terrible thing.

Probably I don't take life as seriously as I should.
Real yogis are listening to tribespeople 
chanting from some remote, far-off corner of the world
while I'm listening to the spiritual Beatles.
Maybe these two don't belong in the same breath
let alone on the same stereo
but then, maybe they do.

She says there's evil forces out there 
a terrible darkness breaking through to stifle us
but I don't think I see it.
I walk into Starbucks, and I don't see it.

No, but I don't, in all seriousness.
She tells us we only get so far 
with dozy-eyed, pretty words of love
and maybe she's right, probably she is
and undoubtedly much wiser than me
because silly love songs are all I've ever wanted.
When I was a child, I heard it said that love was all we needed
and all these years later, I still believe it.
What if my reality is '60s music
Walt Whitman and TS Eliot?

Sometimes I am frightened of the mainstream
but mostly I don't mind it.
I don't like what they're selling to me on TV
so I don't buy it.

I let it be.
I let it be.