What keeps you from being present?

Want want want!
Social security, a nice car,
which of course comes
with a hunk
or beautiful babe.
Gizmos galore, and
who cares about the ceidt
it racks up, or
the mountain of interest
to be paid.
Food junkie, news junkie,
adrenaline junkie and all the
sport stuff, addictives, kayaks,
canoes, computers, consume
consume, consume.
Not living simply so that
others simply can't live.
Passions like this root me
to the things of this world.

But I hate that man! He was
a lousy husband/Senator/lawyer
President/talk show host
or even a woman who wrote books that were so full
of beans that it's laughable.
Yes, a war cost us billions and thousandsof lives
and health care sucks, and education is brpken and new Orleans
and the corruption and immorality
and tax cuts and pardons -
and if you let the anger eat you,
then you as well are one of the victims,
One of the casualties,
a self imposed loser of that battle.
Anger and hatred are self imposed,
a look in the mirror.
Liberate yourself.

Because; because;
all of those things have effect,
but no ultimate meaning.
No one escapes their karma.
No one lives forever.
I will reap what I sow.
Action always brings results
and action left undone
is never met.
The future is determined
by my choice now.
The past is memory
in my mind, mere shadows.
Hope and worry
do me no good.
Ignorance of reality
is the root of anger and passion
as well.
Know myself, be still.
Heal my self, be still.
Then arise,
in gentle love,
and play.