it was canada and then usa and now canada again but soon again usa

i’m wasting all my
goddamned luck
on pointless shit like
having a row of airplane seats to myself,
pointless shit like
being born in a land of
obscene opulence
and dullardly competitive menace.
and now i’ve gone and
hitched myself to
another life where i’ll have to
pay for this blasphemy,
but the god that seems to care about
this kind of karma
isn’t the same god that cares about
the idolatrous tongue,
now is it.

all gods are
the same,
right?

like how action and
non-action
are the same?
like how the man
next to me,
two seats over,
with my luck and all,
like how he chews a
piece of gum and
reads a book
and wears glasses and
uses the gum wrapper
as a place holder
in his book.
right?

this god is
the same as
that god.

i want to get close to him,
this man with the John Grisham book,
i want to get close to him
and look at him
so i can see
the mind inside him,
as though it’s any different
than the mind that inhabits me.

the gods are all
the same.

the thoughts float and flutter
like birds. butterflies
fill me with a sad revulsion
but birds are full of fish and garbage
and let loose their shit wherever they want.
this usage can be considered
“fowl language”
so it does not plague my future life with a
karmic debt
to pay, no.

if you watch the thoughts
they appear
like birds.

that’s one way to put it.

birds or clouds or maybe even
a tall tree,
wispy but also resolute,
stiff but sinuous in the pale evening breeze.

if you watch the thoughts you sometimes,
most times,
get yanked along with them.
if you disconnect yourself from
the thoughts
you can choose to watch,
or not,
choose to float there along with them.
or not.

even someone afraid of heights still wants to
fly. or
maybe
it’s just freedom that we want.
and who is to say what freedom is,
ya?
hollow bones and
a body full of fish
and garbage
doesn’t seem so free.

i’ve followed this
thought
for far too long.

time to let it go.

give it back to
the gods,
any of them,
whichever one will have it,
will have me.

i’ve already crossed the
international border
so no longer can i
pretend that
my god
speaks with a lilt
and an emphasis on a
slightly different syllable.

the dullardly menace is again
all around me,
which means of course that
i have attached myself
to my thoughts,
my feelings.
instead of
watching them.
and letting them
go.

i’ve said it a hundred ways
by this point,
so might as well
say it once again;
the only way to
get free
is to
let go.

doesn’t it feel good,
all this space
to move around in?
doesn’t it feel good,
to distance yourself
from judging how you
feel?